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LINCOLN IN 1857. 
From a photograph. 



A Life of Lincoln 



FOR BOYS 



BY 

Frances Campbell Sparhawk 

Author of " Honor Dalton," " Polly Blatchley," etc. 



♦ 



New York 
Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 

PUBLISHERS 



■>p 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two CotHes Received 

AUG 21 190/ 

j Coovneht Entry 

(AMA i (.lit J 

I CLASS/ A ' XXc.Mo. 



[ CLASS . . 

(SS'OS/ 

COPY B. 



* rfHs ol ni apa 



Copyright, 1907, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 



TO 

E. J. S. 



PREFACE. 

We know the old legend of the great gulf that 
once opened in the earth in Rome and threatened to 
destroy the city. The oracle declared that this gulf 
would never close until the most precious thing in Rome 
had been thrown into it. So the people brought gold 
and jewels and beautiful furniture and ornaments of all 
kinds. But the gulf remained as wide open as ever, and 
the people were in despair. At last one brave man 
who loved his country cried out: "The most precious 
thing in Rome is her manhood ! " And he leaped straight 
down into the gulf, dying for the sake of his country. 
For immediately it shut together over his head and 
Rome was saved. 

In 1861, more than two thousand years afterward, 
in our own land of America, a great gulf of disunion 
opened in the midst of our Republic, and all our efforts 
at closing it were of no avail, until the most precious 
possession in our land, or in any land, had leaped into 
the gulf. Four hundreds of thousands of brave men 
gave their lives to the closing of this gulf of disunion 
which would have destroyed the peace and greatness of 
our land. 

The last life to be sacrificed was Abraham Lincoln's. 
And the gulf closed. For Lincoln was a man whom the 
North as well as many in the South mourned for as a 
patriot, a lover and friend of his whole country. He 



PREFACE. 

was, as Stanton said of him, the greatest ruler of men 
that the world has seen, a ruler by persuading, convinc- 
ing, leading by his own purity of purpose and great 
abilities. 

Abraham Lincoln was as poor as any poor man ; 
none has fewer opportunities than he had. But who 
can bring so much out of so little, because who has his 
ability and his wonderful industry? 

Yet the keynote of his character was not his 
ability or his industry, remarkable as these were. It 
w.is something still higher — it was his purpose. A 
remark that he once made shows how he felt as to all 
the honors that life could give him. He said one day 
that some persons were satisfied with being "Governor" 
or holding some office; but this kind of thing could 
never satisfy him. This was true. Not what he had, 
but what he was and what he could do in the world 
seemed to him worthy of struggle and labor. 

The history of his life gives us a faint idea of what 
his struggle and labor were. It tells us also how his 
great desire to help the world was gratified in a 
wonderful way. 

In all our land, indeed, in all the world there has 
been but one Abraham Lincoln. But of those who have 
his purpose to leave their world in some ways better 
than they found it, there should be many. 

F. C. S. 

Newton Centre, Mass. 
June, 1907 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

i How People Lived in 1809 ... 9 

ii Daniel Boone and the Lincoln Pioneers 17 

in The Little Boy in the Lonely Woods . 26 

iv Going to Indiana 33 

v A Good Step-Mother 40 

vi Axe and School-Book 47 

vii What Lincoln Liked Best of All to do 54 

viii Among His Comrades 61 

ix His Trips to New Orleans ... 68 

x How He Kept Shop; What Came of it 76 

xi The Black Hawk War .... 82 

Stumping for Election 89 

In Vandalia 97 

xiv The Lincoln-Stone protest .... 105 

xv Settled in Springfield 113 

xvi Abraham Lincoln Marries . . . . 120 

In Congress 126 

A Real Student 132 

xix How Lincoln Practiced Law ... 139 

xx The Lincoln-Douglas Debates . . . 153 

xxi Lincoln in New York and New England 1 62 
xxii The Organization of the Republican 

Party 170 

:xiii In the Wigwam at Chicago . . . . 177 



XII 
XIII 



XVII 
XVIII 





CONTENTS. 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XXIV 


What the South Was Doing in the 






Winter of 1860-61 


185 


XXV 


What the New President Had to Face 


192 


XXVI 


Firing on the Flag 


200 


XXVII 


How the North Responded .... 


205 


XXVIII 


The Battle of Bull Run .... 


212 


XXIX 


Some of the Union Generals 


221 


XXX 


People who Tried to Advise . 


228 


XXXI 


General Lee Comes into Maryland 


234 


XXXII 


Congress and Slavery 


240 


XXXIII 


The Emancipation Proclamation . 


246 


XXXIV 


Foes Before and Foes Behind 


253 


XXXV 


General Grant at Vicksburg 


259 


XXXVI 


War on the Ocean 


268 


XXXVII 


On the Field of Gettysburg 


274 


XXXVIII 


How Mr. Lincoln Tried for Peace . 


284 


XXXIX 


How the People Learned to Trust Him 


288 


XL 


How Grant Fought It Out on That 






Line 


295 


XLI 


Lincoln's Walk Through Richmond 


306 


XLII 


The Joy of the Nation in Victory and 






Peace 


310 


XLIII 


A People's Grief 


318 


XLIV 


The Great American 


323 



A LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 
I. 

How People Lived in 1809. 

If you should shut your eyes on this present 
year and some fairy would whisk you backward 
into the year 1809, and, still keeping your eyes 
shut, you should listen, it would seem to you 
very still. Not a sound of the electric cars 
would you hear ; not an automobile would rum- 
ble in the distance and make you look to find if 
you were in its track; no whistle and rush of 
steam cars would you hear; no postman's 
whistle would sound shrill in the distance as he 
hurried from house to house with his bag of 
mail ; no footsteps of the boy with the morning 
or the evening paper to deliver would sound on 
the pavement or come running over the grass, 
cross lots; no telegram would be handed in at 
your door; no telephone bell would make you 
rush to the receiver to find out what somebody 
miles away was going to talk to you about— 



10 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

none of these things would you hear, for at that 
time they did not exist; there were no electric 
cars, or automobiles, or steamcars ; no postmen, 
or paper-boys, or telegraphs or telephones; no 
steamers crossing and re-crossing the ocean. 

Then if you could open your eyes on this 
country as it was in 1809, remembering how you 
live and travel nowadays, you would wonder 
more and more how people got on at all in 
those times. 

For from somewhere far down the dusty road 
you would hear a rumbling slowly growing 
more distinct ; by and by you would see a cloud 
of dust heavier than that raised now by an 
automobile, because in those times the roads 
were not so good; then two horses would come 
into view, and behind them two more, drawing a 
lumbering stagecoach such as you have never 
seen except in pictures. If you wished to take 
a journey, this would be the coach you would 
travel in— unless you were very rich and went 
in your own carriage with your own pair of 
horses. 

If you were going any great distance, for 
instance, from New York to Boston— for that 
was a great distance in those days — you would 
have to prepare for a week's journey; for that 
trip used to take six days by stagecoach. Now 
the fast expresses do it in less than six hours. 



HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN 1809. 11 

As you were getting ready to start, people in 
your neighborhood would come or send to you 
asking if you would do them the kindness to 
deliver certain letters to their friends or busi- 
ness correspondents in Boston, or wherever you 
might be going. In those days it cost so much 
to send a letter by post that people always asked 
their friends to carry it, whenever this was 
possible. They used to begin their letters : "I 
take this opportunity of Mr. So-and-So's going 
to such a place"— wherever this might be— "to 
send you a letter. ' ' Then they would tell their 
news. In those days letters did not have envel- 
opes; they were folded in a peculiar way that 
we should find it hard to imitate and sealed with 
sealing wax with a monogram, or a crest, or 
some pretty device pressed into the wax from 
the stamp. 

The regular mail went on these stagecoaches 
according to a law that Congress passed in 
the March of 1802. Before that time the mail 
was carried by men on horseback. How small 
the mailbags must have been! Only the great 
iron horse can now carry the mails that are 
going from city to city all over the land, not 
once in two or three days, or even once a day, 
but all the time, every few hours. And a mail 
bag, or perhaps two thrown across a saddle 
with horse and rider jogging along the heavy 



12 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

roads! — why, now it takes a car fitted up for 
the purpose to carry the mails. It used to cost 
twenty-five cents and then twelve cents to send 
a letter. Now, as we know, one will go from 
Maine to California for two. So people don't 
ask their friends to take letters for them on 
journeys as they once did; they only have to 
ask them to drop these into the letter boxes. 

If you had been traveling in 1809, you would 
not have gone inside the stagecoach if it had 
been fine weather; but would have taken a seat 
aloft beside the driver where you could breathe 
the fresh air and enjoy the country. And you 
would have found that the driver was express- 
man also and stopped at this house and that to 
deliver letters and packages and to receive and 
deliver messages. You would have found, too, 
that he knew all the gossip of the places he 
passed through on his route and could tell you 
the history of most of the people in them. For 
all the world loves to hear and tell news; and 
those were not the days of newspapers where 
people could read all the news they wanted, and 
sometimes more than they wanted. For in 1801 
there were only two hundred weekly and seven- 
teen daily newspapers published in all the coun- 
try. So, if people had not told each other the 
news, how would they have heard any? 

The stagecoaches stopped at taverns on the 



HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN 1809. 13 

way for fresh horses ; and if you had been one of 
the passengers, you would have gone in with the 
rest to get breakfast, or dinner, or supper. In 
those times dinner was in the middle of the day, 
unless with a few very fashionable persons who 
had it in the middle of the afternoon. 

When you reached the end of your journey, 
if it happened to be winter weather and you 
were cold and snowy, no doubt you would have 
found a warm welcome from your friends, but 
you would not have found a warm house. They 
would have ushered you into the drawingroom 
where you would have found a great blazing 
fire of wood looking so comfortable and so beau- 
tiful. If you sat up close to the fire your nose 
would have been warm, or if you turned your 
back to the blaze your back would have been 
warm; but you would have found it difficult to 
keep both warm at the same time. Or if you 
had found a Franklin stove— for these were in 
use before that time, you would have been 
warmer so long as you kept near it. But as 
to having rooms and halls all over a house 
warmed as they are now, nobody ever dreamed 
of such a thing. 

You might ask: "If it took so long to go 
between New York and Boston, how long did 
it take to go to California ?" 



14 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

There was no California— there was the coun- 
try of course. But it belonged to Mexico and 
only came to the United States when Texas did, 
in the Mexican war, 1845-1848. 

In early times, and even after the Bevolu- 
tionary war, it had been thought that we should 
never want the country west of the Mississippi, 
and that this would always be a wilderness and 
a place for the Indians. But as the country 
grew, people changed their minds. In 1821 the 
United States bought Florida from Spain. 
Before that, however, in 1803, Louisiana was 
bought by us from France. The French had 
first come there in 1699 ; then France ceded it 
to Spain, 1762; but in 1800 Spain gave it back 
to France. Three years later the United States 
bought it from France. 

We know the boundaries of Louisiana now. 
But in those days it was very much larger and 
its boundaries were ''vague and undeter- 
mined." On the north it went to Canada; or 
one old record says it "ends on the north at a 
place called Detroit between Lake Erie and 
Lake Huron." On the south it ran to the Gulf 
of Mexico. And as no one could tell on the west 
just where the French country ended which the 
United States had bought as Louisiana, and 
where the Spanish possessions began, the 



HOW PEOPLE LIVED IN 1809. 15 

Americans pushed west as far as they could and 
said the land had been French and belonged to 
them. 

Ohio had been made a State only in 1802 ; and 
in 1809 the countiy west of this largely re- 
mained to be settled and conquered from the 
wilderness for civilization. Kentucky and 
Tennessee were States about the end of 1700; 
Vermont was admitted in 1791. But in 1809 
these were the only new States admitted into 
the Union since the Revolution. This makes us 
realize what a different country even in size it 
was from today. 

But, after all, it is not the size of a country 
that counts so much; it is not its many inven- 
tions and comforts and conveniences of business 
and of life, and, especially, it is not its vast 
wealth that makes its real power and greatness 
—it is the men and women in it that really count 
for its present and its future. And in America 
at that time were men and women as strong and 
brave and able as any who live today ; and most 
of all there were good and true men and women 
who loved God and loved their country. 

It was into this country of great perform- 
ance and still greater promise, and to be a 
leader of such men and women in a time of ter- 
rible struggle and danger, the choice of the 



16 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

people and, under God, their ruler to guide this 
nation to life instead of death— it was to do all 
this, and beyond it, to show in his own character 
how true and great a man can be, that, February 
12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born. 



II. 

Daniel Boone and the Lincoln Pioneers. 

The original grant of Colonial Virginia was 
a very large country indeed ; it included not only 
Virginia as it now is on the map, but the whole 
of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and "every- 
thing westward to the Mississippi, and as much 
further as the colony had a mind to claim." 
The Virginia called afterward "the mother of 
States" was only the part between the Alle- 
ghany Mountains and Chesapeake Bay — our 
present Virginia. 

The people who settled Virginia were more 
from the rural districts of England than those 
who came to New England; some were squires 
and many were yeomen. They were not so 
ready to build cities and live together as in New 
England; they liked better to spread over the 
country and have great estates. And they did 
not have so hard a time with the Indians as did 
the New England people, so that they could do 
this more safely. 

17 



18 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

As we know, the first Virginia company was 
organized in 1606. But this did not succeed, be- 
cause people in England wanted to do all the 
management and give those here no rights. 
Then, in 1624, the English government took 
control, and the colonists came over faster. 
They soon found that there was no gold in the 
State and that they were too far south to get 
furs from the Indians. But about this time 
tobacco was introduced into Europe, and Vir- 
ginia was found to be a fine place to grow 
tobacco; the colonists went into its culture 
largely. They needed plenty of land for this; 
and after a time when the best lands in Virginia 
had been taken up, they began to look over the 
mountains to see what was beyond. 

It was not all desire for tobacco fields, how- 
ever, that influenced them. The Anglo-Saxon 
people love land, they want space enough to 
live in, and to own for themselves acres and 
acres of rich lands. So, as has been said, after 
the best lands in Virginia had been taken up, 
the most ambitious and adventurous settlers be- 
gan to dream of going to those beyond ; and at 
that time Kentucky seemed to them a world of 
wonders and romance. It had the Ohio river 
on the north, the Mississippi on the west, the 
Cumberland Mountains between it and Virginia ; 
it had rich and fertile lands ready for the pio- 



BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 19 

neers; also, many of its rivers were navigable. 
There was another advantage. Only the Chick- 
asaw Indians were really living in the country ; 
the other tribes passed through it often on their 
raids but lived north or south, or beyond the 
Mississippi; so that the land was open to the 
white man if he could come and take possession 
of the forests and cultivate the rich plains that 
he would find. These fertile acres proved too 
tempting to resist when the farmers in Virginia 
found that they would have to farm on the 
slopes of the Alleghanies or go beyond these for 
new lands. As early as 1750 Indian traders had 
found passes through these mountains; and it 
was one of these Indian traders who guided 
Daniel Boone to the State that he helped to build 
up and that made him so famous. 

The first Kentucky colony was founded in 
1774; and the following year other footholds 
were taken and held; all earlier attempts had 
failed. 

Boone was not the first there; but he came 
early enough to find plenty to do, and to do it. 

Daniel Boone was born in Pennsylvania, in 
1734. But when he was a young man he moved 
from there, and through the Shenandoah Valley 
in Virginia went to the banks of the Yadkin 
Biver in North Carolina. There he married; 
and it was not until May of 1769 that he began 



20 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

his exploration of Kentucky. Several men went 
there in company with Boone. 

But that winter Boone and a friend he was 
hunting with were captured by Indians. The 
Indians spoiled the camps and then set Boone 
and his companion free and told them they 
must never come there again, because they were 
trespassing upon Indian hunting grounds un- 
der treaties made with the Indians. This was 
true ; but Boone did not know it, or care for it. 
The Boone family were Quakers; and Daniel's 
grandfather had come to Pennsylvania to be 
near William Penn. Daniel had always been 
used to Indians ; in his childhood they had come 
to his father's house and had always been on 
friendly terms with the Boones; and Daniel 
knew them thoroughly. All his life he had great 
influence over them. They captured him several 
times; but they never hurt him. But he never 
saw again the other men of their party who had 
come to Kentucky with him. 

After their release, as he was going through 
the woods with his companion, they met two 
men who called to them that they were white men 
and friends. One proved to be Daniel's younger 
brother, Squire Boone, come in search of Daniel. 

The two men with the Boones were not long 
afterward killed. Then the two brothers were 
alone together in the vast woods. There they 



BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 21 

spent the long winter. In the spring their am- 
munition ran low. As they had to depend upon 
hunting for food, and for skins which gave them 
what money they had, there was nothing to do 
but go to the settlements for more. And they 
must have more horses and other supplies. 
Daniel decided that one of them must go and 
one stay; and that he must be the one to stay. 
For three whole months he was there, "by my- 
self," he afterward said, " without bread, salt or 
sugar, without company of my fellow-creatures, 
or even a horse or dog." But he was born to 
live in the woods, he loved them so, and he loved 
hunting. It is said of him : "He was wanting in 
no quality of wise woodcraft. He could outrun 
a dog or a deer; he could thread the woods with- 
out food day and night ; he could find his way as 
easily as a panther could. Although a great 
athlete and a tireless warrior, he hated fighting 
and only fought for peace. In council and in 
war he was equally valuable. His advice was 
never rejected without disaster, nor followed 
but with advantage ; and when the fighting once 
began there was not a rifle in Kentucky which 
could rival his." 

Yet for all his skill and his love of great 
spaces about him, he was homesick in those long 
lonely months and was glad enough to see his 
brother again. After Squire's return the two 



22 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

hunted for a year longer "in those lovely 
wilds." For they had to earn money by the 
skins of the animals they shot. Then they went 
back to the Yadkin River and brought their 
families to Kentucky. 

The first ancestor of Abraham Lincoln to 
reach America came to Hingham, Massachu- 
setts, in 1838, and died there. His grandson 
removed to New Jersey, and from there to Penn- 
sylvania, where he died in 1735. His appraisers 
called him "Mordecai Lincoln, Gentleman," so 
that he must have had property. To one of his 
sons he left land in New Jersey; and this son 
about 1750 went to Virginia. It was this son, 
Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of our presi- 
dent, who went to Kentucky, partly because he 
wanted more land and partly because he was 
so interested in what he had heard from Boone 
about that country. For the Boones and the 
Lincolns were well acquainted; there had been 
marriages in the families ; both were of Quaker 
origin. This ancestor of our president was quite 
well off, and when he sold his Virginia estates 
he bought land in Kentucky that would have 
made the family rich if they had kept it. 

When he went there in 1780, the country was 
not quite so wild and uninhabited as it had been 
at Boone's coming. The people had begun to 
cultivate the land and they had built forts for 



BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 23 

defence. For Kentucky was the border land 
between the northern and southern Indians who 
were at war with one another and was directly 
in the warpaths of these Indians. Also, in deal- 
ing with the Indians the white settlers did not 
regard the treaties made with them and some- 
times were quite as treacherous and savage in 
warfare with them as the Indians themselves. 
Then, west of the Mississippi, and also north 
and south of Kentucky were the French who 
always got on well with the Indians and many 
a time roused them against the English settlers. 
The Indians loved their own lands as much as 
the white men did who came to crowd them out 
and take possession. There was enough land 
for both ; but neither saw it so ; and it was a time 
of savagery and horror. 

In 1780 three hundred "large family boats" 
went down the Ohio River with people who 
settled in Kentucky; for that must have been 
an easier way of bringing families and house- 
hold stuff than by land. In that same year the 
town of Louisville was incorporated; and the 
Virginia legislature— for then Kentucky was a 
part of Virginia, as we remember— endowed a 
college in that country, the origin of the Uni- 
versity of Lexington. 

In 1781 more people came ; and after the war 
of the Revolution a good many soldiers went 



24 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

back to Virginia who had no regular occupa- 
tion ; some of these came to Kentucky as settlers. 
There were among the settlers many worthy 
people, and some knaves, as in every com- 
munity. 

But it was a hard, hard life, with terrible 
work and great danger, and no amusements ; no 
books or papers, very little visiting; only once 
in a while an opportunity to hear a preacher, 
and for this they had to take much time and 
travel far. The people dressed in skins of wild 
beasts that the men had killed and in linen stuffs 
that the women had woven. Except in firearms 
and knives they had almost no iron. They ate 
chiefly game, fish and coarse cornmeal. They 
used to buy and sell by barter, so that many a 
child grew up without ever seeing money. Their 
dwellings were open to the weather and some 
were so cold that the people living in them had 
to sleep on their shoes lest they should freeze 
too stiff to put on in the morning. Children 
used to play barefoot in the snow. But they 
suffered much from such hardships, and grew 
old and died before their time. 

But for all their hard living these people had 
a great regard for law and through everything 
kept a certain order. They organized for them- 
selves courts and councils; enforced contracts; 
collected debts ; and in knowledge of government 



BOONE AND THE LINCOLN PIONEERS. 25 

were far above their social condition. They 
were strong and courageous men and women. 
To the pluck and endurance of our pioneers all 
over the land, we owe much of what our country- 
is today. 

It was from such ancestors as these that 
Abraham Lincoln was descended. In the great 
struggles and victories of his life he needed all 
the courage that came to him from brave and 
worthy men and women. 



III. 

The Little Boy in the Lonely Woods. 

Abraham Lincoln, the grandfather of our 
president, was killed by Indians. He was work- 
ing with his three sons at the edge of a clearing. 
When he was shot, the oldest son, Mordecai, 
ran to the house and seized a rifle; the second 
son flew to the neighboring fort for assistance ; 
and Thomas, the youngest, afterward the father 
of President Lincoln, but then a child of six 
years, was left alone with the body of his father. 
Mordecai saw through a loophole in the cabin 
an Indian stooping to pick up the child ; and he 
shot the Indian dead. Help came from the fort 
and the Indians who had begun to gather, ran 
away. The rest of his life Mordecai always shot 
all the Indians he could, and never waited to 
find out whether they were his friends or his 
foes. 

After her husband's death Abraham Lincoln's 
widow moved to a more thickly settled neighbor- 

26 




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LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 27 

hood ; and there her children grew up. Thomas 
became a carpenter. He could do good work, 
but had no ambition, and was the poorest of 
any of the Lincoln family. But he was honest 
and good and self-respecting, and of a sunny 
disposition. While he was learning his trade, 
he married Nancy Hanks, the niece of his em- 
ployer. Her family had come from Virginia at 
the same time with the Lincolns and others. 
She could read and write, and she taught her 
husband to write his name. She was bright 
and handsome ; but they were very poor. After 
the birth of a daughter, they moved to a little 
farm, barren and unattractive. There, when 
Thomas and his wife were poorer than ever, on 
the twelfth of February, 1809, their son Abra- 
ham Lincoln was born. Evidently, he was 
named for his grandfather who was killed by 
Indians. Little did father and mother guess 
that this baby son after he had lived over fifty 
years was destined also to be shot, not by In- 
dians, but by one quite as wicked and savage 
as any of them. \ 

When we see young people with every advan- 
tage, able to go to the best schools, to have all 
the best books to read, to travel and see many 
countries and famous places, to have all kinds of 
privileges and enjoyments in life, we are led to 



28 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

think that they have such opportunities to grow 
great in mind and power and do a noble work in 
the world that we are tempted to envy them all 
their possibilities. But when we study the mat- 
ter we find that of all those who have made their 
lives a blessing to the world in any walk of life, 
in science, art, literature, discovery, government, 
very few have begun their lives with special 
advantages. A much greater number have 
worked their own way from poverty and hard 
circumstances and grown strong in their battles 
with hardships. A man's real possessions are 
his mind, become strong by study and thought 
and exercise along the lines in which he grows 
great, and especially his heart, which guides 
him in honesty and honor and justice and love 
to his fellowmen and points out the only right 
way to walk. 

But of all the children who began life with 
little and grew to greatness, very few had so 
little as Abraham Lincoln. It is said that he 
never talked even to his intimate friends of 
those very early years. The first four years of 
life Abraham passed on a dismal and barren 
farm on Nolin Creek in Hardin County. Then 
his father bought a fine farm on Knob Creek 
and put a part of it under cultivation. Here 
they lived until the boy was seven years old. 

What a lonely life for the little fellow! His 



LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 29 

sister, a year or two older, was, no doubt often 
helping her mother. The two children went to 
school together to the only school in the neigh- 
borhood, where they learned the alphabet and 
not much more. But of books, toys, games and 
home care and petting, the little fellow knew 
nothing. 

From a baby he wandered out by himself to 
find his own amusement in the lonely woods. 
Perhaps he, like Daniel Boone, loved the vast, 
beautiful woods, the stateliness of the trees— 
the sycamores, tulip trees, sugartrees, honey 
locusts, coffee trees, pawpaws, cucumber trees 
and black mulberries. There were not very 
many pines or fir trees which made it much 
easier for the pioneers, because they could so 
much more readily make a path through the 
woods, since the branches were high and there 
was not much underbrush. Then, the flowers 
were very beautiful, and there were so many of 
them in such variety. 

But Abraham Lincoln when he was a young 
man was never a hunter like Daniel Boone. And 
in addition to his great tender heart, which 
loved all men and creatures too, there may have 
been another reason for this. For we can picture 
the lonely little fellow all by himself in the great 
woods, seated at the foot of some tree and 
making playmates of the inhabitants of these 



30 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

forests, the rabbits, the squirrels, and the birds. 
They would not be afraid of him; they would 
come about him and he would welcome them. 
He would watch them and learn their habits and 
come to love them far too well ever to point his 
gun at any of the fur or feather denizens of the 
great forests. They had been his companions 
and friends. It was not in his heart to hurt 
them. 

Like the barefoot boy whom the Poet Whittier 
writes about, little Abraham Lincoln must have 
learned 

"Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wildflower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood ; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well ; 
How the robin feeds her young, 
How the oriole's nest is hung; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
"Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the groundnut trails its vine, 
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of grey hornet artisans! — " 



LITTLE BOY IN THE LONELY WOODS. 31 

And the "barefoot boy" says: 

"I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees; 
For my sport the squirrel played, 
Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall." 

The little shepherd boy, David, who after- 
wards became king of Israel, is not the only 
great man in history who in childhood or youth 
has been put out into the wilderness with fields 
or forests around him and the stars overhead. 
Many men who have brought blessings to their 
nation and to the world have been thus left 
alone for a time. Perhaps this is that they may 
come to depend upon themselves, to learn their 
own resources, to find what is in their minds 
and hearts, and may come to use what they find 
there and by using, to develop and strengthen 
their own powers. And also by watching the 
stars and the great sky spaces, to learn to have 
more faith in God and to rest more upon Him 
and grow strong. 

It may have been that Abraham Lincoln was 



32 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

always more sad at times for the memories of 
his lonely infancy and early childhood. 

But, no doubt, also, he was a stronger man 
and understood better his own powers and how 
to use them. 

It is with pity and love and admiration that 
we picture to ourselves the little boy wandering 
and playing, and dreaming and learning in the 
lonely woods. 



IV. 

Going to Indiana. 

Thomas Lincoln was a very sunny-tempered, 
jovial man, fond of a story and able to tell one 
well— a quality which his son inherited from 
him; but he had no ambition. He had self- 
respect, however, and when some bullies in his 
neighborhood were insolent to him, he gave 
them a good drubbing. He was an excellent car- 
penter and could do fine work when he tried; 
but from his life it seems as if he was not fond 
of taking trouble, and as if he did not know how 
to keep what he had. For this fine farm to 
which he moved when Abraham was four years 
old was soon lost. 

He made up his mind then that Kentucky was 
not the State for a poor man to live in. Things 
had changed a good deal from the early settle- 
ment of the State. From the first, plantations 
had been laid out for the cultivation of tobacco, 
and some of the settlers had brought their 

33 



34 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

slaves to work the tobacco fields. These set- 
tlers who owned slaves felt themselves much 
superior to the settlers who had none and made 
a class by themselves and looked down upon the 
white men who had no slaves, just as they did 
in the Southern States. Now, Thomas Lincoln 
was a very poor man. He was ignorant also, 
for when his father was killed by Indians his 
mother had had to bring up her sons as she could 
and had been able to give them no advantages. 
But the Lincolns had always been well-to-do 
before that time, and it was not pleasant to 
Thomas to have himself and his family looked 
down upon as if they were good for nothing 
because he was not a slave owner. It may be 
that he did not like slavery, anyway. But his 
son thought that it was also because land titles 
were so defective in Kentucky that he resolved 
not to stay there. 

So, Thomas made up his mind that he would 
move to Indiana. It cannot be denied that he 
was fond of moving, at any rate; for he did it 
so many times. 

What an easy thing it would be to move from 
Kentucky into Indiana nowadays. But the man- 
ner in which Thomas Lincoln did it, not only 
proved his own poverty, but showed also how 
difficult travel of any kind was at that time. 
He built a raft and put on it his carpenter's 



GOING TO INDIANA. 35 

tools and ten barrels of whiskey, a part of the 
pay he had received in barter for his place, and 
his heavier goods of the household. Then he 
pushed off all by himself and floated down the 
Rolling Fork on which his farm was, to the Ohio 
River. When he landed he found a way to carry 
his goods into Spencer County where he had 
determined to settle. He left them there with 
a settler, crossed the Ohio again and then went 
back to his home on foot. 

While he was away, his wife went with her 
little son Abraham to visit and take leave of the 
grave of the little child she had buried in the 
wilderness. Abraham always remembered this. 

The removal was made on the backs of three 
horses, two of these borrowed. A little bedding 
and clothing, a few pans and kettles were all 
they had. The father's kit of tools was to make 
their furniture, and his rifle to give them their 
food. At the settler's where Lincoln had left 
his tools and his goods, he hired a wagon and 
they cut their way through the wilderness to a 
place on Little Pigeon Creek, near Gentryville 
which was to be their new home. It was a fine 
forest country. 

His wife and children helped, and Lincoln 
built what was called "a half-faced camp." It 
was made of poles and protected the people in 
it from the weather on three sides but was all 



36 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

open on the fourth. Into it flooded the winter 
rains and drifted the winter snows. The fam- 
ily lived in this place for a whole year while 
Lincoln was clearing a patch for planting corn 
and building a rough cabin for their use. This 
was not finished when they moved into it; but 
the family of Sparrows had come there from 
Kentucky, and they wanted the camp. So the 
Lincolns took possession of the cabin, and it 
seemed to them so comfortable after the 
wretched place they had been living in that they 
staid there for a year or two without doors or 
windows or floor. Thomas raised enough corn 
to live on ; the forest with game was all around 
them; near his cabin he could shoot a deer 
readily. This would give them meat for days 
and leather for breeches and shoes. They had 
the roughest furniture; and Abraham when a 
boy used to climb up into his bed of leaves in 
the loft by a ladder made of wooden pins driven 
into the logs of the cabin. Abraham was be- 
tween seven and eight years old when they 
moved to Indiana. 

In the autumn of 1818, when he was a little 
over nine years old, he lost his mother. It was 
no wonder. She was a delicate young woman 
and could not endure the hardships of her life. 
The woods were full of malaria, and that 
autumn a form of fever attacked many of the 



GOING TO INDIANA. 37 

little community where Lincoln lived. The 
Sparrows died of it; and soon after Nancy 
Hanks Lincoln. They were all three buried in 
a little clearing in the dense forest all around 
the home of the Lincolns. The little son 
mourned with his father that there had been no 
Christian service at his mother's burial. Little 
Abraham in the few months that he had gone to 
school in Kentucky had learned to read and 
write, and, child as he was, he had kept prac- 
ticing his writing on sand and the bark of trees, 
so that he not only forgot nothing that he had 
learned, but he gained, and could write a letter 
after a fashion. Both he and his father thought 
of the good Parson Elkin whom they had left 
in Kentucky; and Abraham wrote him asking 
him to come over to them and preach a sermon 
over his mother's grave. It had taken the 
Lincolns seven days to reach their new home 
from their old one on Knob Creek. Bui al- 
though the preacher could travel faster, it was 
a hundred miles through the wilderness from 
his home. Abraham had heard him preach, 
and from him had received his first ideas of 
public speaking. 

The good man came to the sorrowing family. 
The whole neighborhood was told; news went 
from schoolhouse to schoolhouse and every 
family within twenty miles learned of his com- 



38 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ing. There were two hundred persons gath- 
ered to listen to him. Some came in the rudest 
carts; some on horseback, two or three on a 
horse; some in wagons drawn by oxen; and 
some on foot. Then they went to the little 
grave under the tree. Parson Elkin prayed 
and sang, and preached a sermon upon this 
beautiful Christian woman. The memory of 
that scene and of the preacher's words lived in 
little Abraham's heart. Years afterward he 
said to a friend: "All that I am, or hope to 
be, I owe to my angel mother— blessings on 
her memory ! ' ' 

Both father and mother believed in God ; and 
we know that Abraham Lincoln always believed 
deeply in Him through all the great trials and 
responsibilities of his life. His mother could 
read; and when once in a great while a book 
came their way, she would read it to her chil- 
dren, who would listen to her with infinite de- 
light. But from her patient and beautiful life 
they learned most of all. 

With so much lonely and sad in his early 
life, it was no wonder that even when Abraham 
Lincoln grew to be a man he had moods of mel- 
ancholy, as well as times of gayety when he 
could make everybody about him laugh at his 
droll stories and his bright sayings. 

But while he suffered and remembered, hs 



GOING TO INDIANA. 39 

spent no time in moping or selfish mourning. 
Already, so early as when they went to In- 
diana, his little axe rang out in the woods help- 
ing his father clear the farm and build the rude 
cabin. He was a very fine example of indus- 
trial education; for his head and his hands 
always kept pace. He worked and studied and 
thought and grew strong in mind and body. 

And at this time the little pioneer was not 
yet ten years old. 



V. 

A Good Step-Mothek. 

Imagine a cabin eighteen feet square built of 
hewn logs, a cabin with a doorway without any 
door, with openings for windows without any 
frames or windows in them, and into door and 
windows slanting the winter rains and drifting 
snows. The cabin was in the midst of the for- 
est, there was always plenty of wood to be had 
for the cutting. But how much heat would the 
great logs manage to get into a dwelling where 
the bitter cold of an Indiana winter poured in 
unchecked through all these openings, and the 
dampness of the woods added a chill to the 
frosty air? Thomas Lincoln thought it was 
good enough. But even he passed a dreary 
winter there after the death of his wife. 

In that cabin were his two children, Abraham 
who that season saw his tenth birthday, and his 
sister about two years his elder. There was not 
much housekeeping to be done; even the floor 

40 



A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 41 

was the hard earth uncovered by planks. It 
must have been bitterly cold. The furniture 
was such as other pioneers had; a few three- 
legged stools; a bedstead made of poles fas- 
tened to the logs in the cabin and on the outer 
corner held up by a stick driven into the ground. 
A great hewn log on four legs made the table ; 
kettle, skillet, pot and a few tin and pewtef 
dishes were all they had to cook with and to eat 
from. Abraham slept in the loft of the cabin ; 
it has been said before that he got up there 
by a ladder made of wooden pegs driven in 
between the logs of the cabin wall. 

The poor children had plenty of time that 
winter to remember the dear mother lying under 
the snow, and to grieve for her. 

But this was as to hardship the dreariest and 
saddest year to Abraham. When another De- 
cember was upon them, a great and happy 
change had come into the lives of these poor 
children. It came about in this way. One day 
after his wife had been dead a year, Thomas 
Lincoln left the cabin and the children and went 
to Kentucky. It was late in the autumn. 
There was corn enough in the house, and bacon, 
and they could get fresh meat in the forest ; they 
could have wood for the chopping; and there 
were neighbors to go to if they should need them 
very much, although we should probably think 



42 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

that the people they called neighbors lived a 
long way off. There was another boy also in 
the cabin, Dennis Hanks, a relative of the chil- 
dren's mother. That made it better for them. 
He had come to Indiana with the Sparrows, and 
after their death lived with the Lincoln house- 
hold. But it was no fun for these poor little 
folks to wait there nearly a month with the snow 
drifting into the cabin, the winds howling 
through the forest and the little dwelling all 
open to the weather. The children made the 
best of things, however. 

Then, one day in December they heard Tom 
Lincoln's voice shouting to them, and they all 
ran out of doors to see what was the matter. 

There at the edge of the clearing was the 
father, sure enough, with a team of four horses 
and a lumber wagon full of furniture finer than 
the children had ever seen. But this was not 
all; it was a very small part of all. For with 
Mr. Lincoln was his new wife, Mrs. Sally John- 
ston of Kentucky. Tom used to know her when 
they were both young people and she was Miss 
Sally Bush. It is said that he wanted to marry 
her then, and she would not have him. But 
after she had married Mr. Johnston, and he had 
died, she changed her mind and said ''yes" to 
Mr. Lincoln. So, here she was with her three 
children and her household goods, come to be 



A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 43 

the mistress of the cabin. And more than this, 
a great deal— to be a true, loving mother to 
these little ones and to make no difference be- 
tween her own children and her husband's. 

It is said that what first touched her mother 
heart was the utter forlornness of them. Since 
their mother's death Abraham and his little sis- 
ter had not known how to make any new clothes 
for themselves, or had them to make, and their 
father had to do the best he could for himself. 
They stood there pushing their bare, frost bit- 
ten feet back and forth in the snow, looking 
down at their tattered garments, remembering 
their own matted hair, their unwashed hands 
and faces, and gazing with a bitter sense of 
contrast at the neat and well-dressed children 
of the new mother. 

But what put shyness into their greeting 
filled the warm mother heart of the noble wo- 
man with pity and love for the motherless ones. 
From that day so long as she and they lived— 
and she long outlived her famous step-son— 
the two were the children of her love as much 
as her very own were. 

But she did not take her lovingness out in 
sentiment. She went straight to work on the 
problem before her; and it was a. hard one. 
Her husband's children and the young stranger 
were made clean, and comfortably clothed. She 



44 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

was a woman full of energy as well as kindness. 
She liked to have things about her look well. 
She had brought some fine furniture for those 
days ; and she had no intention of having it in 
a house like that. She could not make Thomas 
Lincoln "hum"; for "humming," or spinning 
around was not in him. But she made him come 
as near to this as she could. It was not long 
before she had glass windows in the vacant 
frames, a door in the uncovered doorway, and 
good wooden flooring on the cabin, and other im- 
provements which made it better fitted for the 
new furniture that looked so grand to the Lin- 
coln children. For the new wife had "a fine 
bureau, a table, a set of chairs, a large clothes- 
chest, cooking utensils, knives, forks, bedding, 
and other articles, the like of which had never 
before been carried under any roof of Tom Lin- 
coln's." 

But Mrs. Sally Bush Lincoln possessed not 
only a good heart and skilful hands ; she had a 
wise head as well. So when the house had been 
put into order and the children made respect- 
able by sharing some of the clothing of her own 
children, she began to try to find out what kind 
of step-son she had in the big, shy, keen-witted, 
quick-tongued, warm-hearted Abe. And soon 
the two began to love one another with a love 
that lasted all their lives, and when he was 



A GOOD STEP-MOTHER. 45 

assassinated, she mourned for him as if he had 
been her very own son. 

She was a real American in this— she be- 
lieved in learning; she loved a book. She 
understood the boy's ambition to make some- 
thing of himself, and she delighted in it and 
helped him forward in every way she could. 
She set herself to find out what Abe knew, and 
how he had managed to pick it up. She found 
that from what his own mother had taught him 
and what he had learned the very few months he 
had gone to school with his sister in Kentucky, 
he had learned to read and write. He did not 
do either very well then. But she soon found 
out one thing about him which was the greatest 
encouragement. Abe had a wonderful memory 
and a grip on anything he had once learned that 
would never let it go again ; it seemed as if he 
were just made up of determination to keep 
every scrap of knowledge he had ever gained, 
and from this to reach up to more. He was 
like a mountain climber who hews out for him- 
self with his tools a foothold in the steep rock, 
and then puts his foot on this and stands on it 
until he has cut himself out a higher step. 
Then he mounts into this. And so, when there 
is no path, he makes one, on to the top. 

Mrs. Lincoln gloried in Abe's studying. 
She would not let him be interrupted in it; he 



46 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

must read until he put down his book of his own 
accord; and she made his father allow him to 
do this. It is not necessary to say that a woman 
like her wanted all the children to go to the best 
schools there were at that time and place. 
And those were strange enough. 






VI. 

Axe and School-Book. 

A schoolmaster of the old early days of Ken- 
tucky says that his first boarding place— for 
then schoolmasters boarded around in the homes 
of their pupils— was in a house consisting of a 
single room sixteen feet square. In this room 
lived the father and mother of the family, ten 
children, three dogs, two cats and himself. 

But it was at about this time that the Uni- 
versity of Lexington was founded, and oppor- 
tunities began to open for a wider education 
and betters teachers than usually were willing 
to live in such wilds. 

In the early days of Indiana things were a 
good deal after the same style. Abraham Lin- 
coln wrote of those days: "It was a wild 
region, with many bears and other wild animals 
still in the woods. There were some schools 
so-called, but no qualification was ever required 
of a teacher beyond 'readin', writin' and 

47 



48 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

cipherin' to the Rule of Three.' If a straggler 
supposed to understand Latin happened to 
sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked 
upon as a wizard. There was absolutely 
nothing to excite ambition for education." 

But on Little Pigeon Creek a mile and a half 
from the Lincoln farm, the settlers had built a 
log schoolhouse; it stood near what to them 
was a grand new meeting-house. Hazel Dorsey 
was the schoolmaster. To him Mrs. Lincoln 
sent the boys and girls of her family. To Abe 
this was the opening of a new world. For when 
he could read and write readily, he took his 
education into his own hands, since there was 
nobody else there to teach him, and read every 
book he could lay his hands on. Among the 
very few volumes in his own home was the 
Bible. He learned a great deal of that by heart. 
It is surprising how many men who have been 
great as writers and orators have been familiar 
with the Bible; they seem to have taken to it, 
at least at first, not because they knew it was the 
great teacher, not only in life but in expression 
also; but more, perhaps, because in households 
where books were very scarce there was usually 
a Bible. 

"iEsop's Fables" and "Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
Progress" were two of the other books that 
Abe read. But he did not read as we read, 



AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 49 

skim today and forget tomorrow in reading 
something else ; he would have soon been out of 
books in that way. He read a book over and 
over and copied out parts that he liked best and 
learned them, until that book was a part of his 
life, just as we masticate our food until it 
becomes a part of our bodies. 

After all, in education it is not so much the 
schoolhouse that counts. Lincoln's schoolhouse 
was a little " cabin of round logs, with split logs 
for a floor, split logs roughly smoothed with an 
axe and set up on legs for benches, and a log cut 
out at one end and the space filled in with 
squares of greased paper for window panes." 
It was lighted by keeping the door open. The 
only books, or slates and pencils, or pens, ink 
and paper were what the settlers brought with 
them. We all know the story of how Lincoln 
used to put scraps of writing on pieces of bark 
scrawled with charcoal, or on the wooden shovel 
by the fireplace which he used to shave clean 
when it was covered with figures or writing, and 
begin over again. He had a very precious 
scrapbook, like a copybook, or notebook, where 
he used to write down what he wanted most to 
save. 

And not only Lincoln, but many other great 
men have begun their education in very insig- 
nificant buildings ; it is not the schoolhouse that 



50 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

counts. It is not even the teacher, although he 
makes much more difference. The person who 
really counts is the boy— whether he wants to 
slip along in life and do as little as he can, or 
whether he means to make the best use of the 
talents God has given him. When a man, or a 
boy, takes things too easily, his mind gets 
flabby, like his muscles; and there is no good 
work coming out of him ; he cannot be an athlete 
in brain or body. 

Abe was a fine speller, and it is said that he 
was so ready to help out the other children when 
they got into hard places that when the teacher 
had spelling matches, he used to put Abe out of 
doors sometimes so that he could not help the 
rest. And one day came when the teacher 
declared that the whole school should stay until 
the children could spell " defied" correctly. 
Everybody in the school was sure there was 
a "y" in the word but poor Lincoln, and he was 
safely outside. But not so safely as the master 
thought. For when the word came to a little 
girl who was a favorite of Abe's, there stood 
the boy at the window with his finger pointed 
straight at his eye. The little girl caught his 
meaning and spelled the word ; and the teacher 
was happy in the thought that Lincoln had had 
nothing to do with it. 

After Abraham had studied a few months 



AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 51 

with these schoolmasters, he knew all that they 
could teach him. His last teacher was Swaney 
who taught between four and five miles from 
Lincoln's home. All these miles of walking 
seemed waste of time to Thomas Lincoln, and 
he soon put his son at steady work, and the 
boy bade good-by to school. 

But all the time from a very young boy he 
knew what it was to work. He was so tall and 
strong that he did a man's work from the time 
he left school. He was so bright and witty that 
everybody liked to employ him. He was always 
doing kind things. Once he found a drunken 
man lying freezing by the roadside. His com- 
panions wanted to leave him to his fate. But 
Lincoln carried him on his back to the near- 
est tavern, sent word that he was not coming 
home that night, and staid and worked over the 
poor fellow until he revived. But Lincoln him- 
self never took intoxicating liquor of any kind, 
although at that time almost everybody drank 
more or less. He hated it, and saw that it was 
a curse. 

The young man was a great favorite every- 
where for his capacity for hard work, his love 
of fun, his droll stories, his kind-heartedness. 
And he did not keep this kindness for the world 
beyond his home. Owing to the strength and 
loveliness of character of his step-mother and to 



52 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Abraham's own good nature and helpfulness 
largely, it was a happy and united household. 
Brothers and sisters and cousins all acknowl- 
edged that their big brother Abraham was first 
of them all in goodness and cleverness. Mrs. 
Lincoln not long before her death said to his 
friend, Mr. Herndon: "I can say what scarcely 
one mother in a thousand can say, Abe never 
gave me a cross word or look, and never refused 
in fact or appearance to do anything I asked 
him. His mind and mine— what little I had— 
seemed to run together. Abe was the best boy I 
ever saw or expect to see. ' ' 

His fun, and he was full of it, was never 
viciousness or unkindness to any human crea- 
ture, or dumb animal. What he must have suf- 
fered in our civil war when he was President 
and knew of all the wounded and suffering and 
dying and dead on the battlefields of our land — 
he who could not endure to see an animal tor- 
tured ! 

There are so many kinds of schools in the 
world, schools where books are studied ; schools 
of hardships where men are made strong in soul 
and body; schools of life where men are trained 
in various tasks ; schools of greatness where God 
has a special service for a man and prepares 
him for it by many experiences of joy and sad- 
ness, of self-denial and hardship, of perplexity 



AXE AND SCHOOL-BOOK. 53 

and struggle and conquest; and always by 
plenty of work ; in every life worth living work 
is never left out. The great thing is to do the 
right kind of work, work that will endure. It 
is told of Lincoln that one day after he had 
become a lawyer and was riding the circuit, 
that is, going from court to court in the different 
counties, he began to talk to a friend about the 
growing corruption of the world in politics and 
morals. "Oh, how hard it is," he said, "to die 
and not be able to leave the world any better 
for one's little life in it!" 

This was his desire in life. How wonder- 
fully the wish of his heart was granted! 



VII. 

What Lincoln Liked Best of All to Do. 

John Hanks, Lincoln's mother's cousin, said 
of him: "When Abe and I returned to the 
house from work, he would go to the cupboard, 
snatch a piece of cornbread, take down a book, 
sit down, cock his legs up as high as his head, 
and read." 

Except for his great fondness for reading and 
study, his life at that time was like that of other 
farm-hands. He went from farm to farm and 
worked. He was so strong, so willing to help 
in an emergency, and so efficient and good-tem- 
pered that his services were always in demand. 
Yet while he was using his great physical 
strength and getting his living, although a poor 
one, he was always preparing for the grand life 
of work and leadership before him which he so 
little guessed in its fame, but which, no doubt, 
he felt from early life was a work in which 

54 



WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 55 

farming, crop-raising, husking and the life of 
the men about him had no part. 

But he never made the great mistake of 
slighting or lightly esteeming his neighbors and 
comrades on account of his dreams of a great 
future. He used what opportunities he had— 
the only way to arrive at more— and he con- 
stantly reached out after the more. He was 
full of the greatest curiosity to know what was 
going on in the world and all facts that he 
could find about the universe, and was always 
picking up scraps of knowledge that went over 
the heads of his companions. One day when the 
little Polly Roby whom a few years before he 
had taught through the window to spell "de- 
fied," had grown up and married, she came to 
the boat where young Lincoln was working and, 
happening to look up at the sky, she remarked 
that the sun was going down. The young man 
took occasion to inform her that it was the earth 
that moved, and not the sun. She stared at 
him in utter scorn. To his statement that the 
sun was not going down but we were "coming 
up," she retorted: "Don't you s'pose I've got 
eyes?" And when he went into further explana- 
tions as to the swinging around of the earth so 
that we could not see the sun, she cried: "Abe, 
what a fool you are !" It was of no use for the 
flatboatman, as he then was, to try to teach the 



56 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

people along the Ohio Kiver anything about an 
object so familiar to them as the sun. Like 
many others before and since, they believed 
their eyes, which in some cases we, certainly, 
cannot believe. 

The Bible and "iEsop's Fables" which it has 
been said he read so much, gave Lincoln in 
after life many a strong illustration, and also 
taught him much as to the best way of putting 
things. The "Fables" helped him in his own 
stories and illustrations. 

After a while he got hold of "Robinson Cru- 
soe" and delighted in the new life it told him 
of and the ingenuity of Crusoe in meeting all 
his emergencies. "Sinbad the Sailor" revealed 
to him a world of wonders. A "History of the 
United States" was perhaps the first direct 
preparation which he had for the work that, long 
afterward, lay before him. For then he began 
to learn somewhat of the country which after- 
ward he was to be the leader in saving from 
disunion. 

When he was fifteen he found that one of 
his neighbors had a copy of the "Life of Wash- 
ington." It was a small, thin book but full of 
enthusiasm for its hero. Lincoln borrowed it 
and read it over and over very carefully and 
made many notes both on his shingles and his 
shovel and in his precious notebook. But one 



WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 57 

unhappy night there came a great storm; and 
when the boy was fast asleep it beat through 
the chinks of the log house and deluged the shelf 
on which this "Life of Washington" was lying. 
The next morning Abe discovered the book 
soaked and ruined ! And there was not another 
"Life of Washington" in that part of Indiana! 
The poor boy took home the dilapidated book 
and offered to pay for it in work, since he had 
no money. It had been soiled and thumbed 
and dog's-eared when he borrowed it; but the 
owner took advantage of the accident and made 
the boy pull fodder for three days in payment. 
Then it became Abe's own. But later Abe in 
some ways "got even" with the old gentleman 
who had made him pay so much for the volume. 
Whenever new settlers came and brought one 
or more volumes with them, Abe borrowed these 
if he could. He seemed to scent out a book as 
a hunter scents game. And when he borrowed, 
he did not return until he had read the books 
over and over again, and brought into use his 
shingle and charcoal or his wooden shovel and 
his notebook for the quotations he wanted to 
keep or the thoughts that the books inspired in 
him. It was good practice that he had to make 
his own sentences as compact as possible for lack 
of paper; it taught him condensation which 
often means power of expression. 



58 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

It is interesting that Lincoln's first effort to 
express himself on paper at sufficient length to 
be considered a composition should have been 
called forth by his compassion for a little crea- 
ture that was suffering and his indignation at 
his own young companions who were torturing 
it. For the boys had put a live coal on the back 
of a terrapin. When Abe saw it crawling along 
in the anguish of its burning, he broke out into 
indignant protest against the torturers for their 
wanton cruelty. No doubt he made a good 
defence; and he was always listened to, for 
what he said was always interesting and con- 
vincing. So, we may well believe that he saved 
the poor terrapin from further torture; for he 
was a friend to all the helpless creatures of the 
woods. After his plea he began to put down on 
his shingle, or his shovel, a part of what he had 
said to the boys ; he added to this, until, at last, 
there stood in his notebook his first composition : 
i i Cruelty to Animals. ' ' Then he perceived that 
he could put words on paper and make them 
effective. 

"What a long road from this first plea for 
kindness toward the creatures beneath us to his 
wonderful speech upon the battlefield of Gettys- 
burg, a speech that, all the world over, is con- 
sidered one of the most beautiful and touching 
in the English language! A long road it was 



WHAT LINCOLN LIKED BEST TO DO. 59 

from one to the other; and every step of it was 
taken with labor, although many steps with 
labor that he loved; and not a few were in the 
sorrow of a great heart that mourned for suf- 
fering and bloodshed in our nation where men 
were fighting each other to the death. He had 
a wonderful mind as leader and guide of our 
people to higher truths. But his ever true and 
ever loving heart has taught us the better to 
understand the words of Longfellow: 

"It is the heart, and not the brain, 
That the highest doth attain." 

It is significant that his first essay which his 
playmates alone heard, and, less than two years 
before his death, his immortal words to his coun- 
try and the world should both be full of tender- 
ness for suffering. One reproves his mates for 
bringing it cruelly upon a little creature. And 
it was this very spirit which led him on through 
the long years to reverencing the consecration 
of suffering when the cause was worthy of it. 

Abraham Lincoln was an ideal American in 
many ways. And he was one of the builders up 
of a new continent in this way, that he did not 
study for the sake of the knowledge alone; he 
had not the spirit of the lonely student who hugs 
what he learns and loves it for itself and lives in 



60 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

it and for it and wants nothing further. This in 
its own way brings gain in knowledge and helps 
the world also. But this was not what we 
needed at that time; it was not Abraham Lin- 
coln's work. Life among men and power over 
them, noble power to lead them to good was to 
be his part in life ; and, even when a boy, he was 
making himself ready for the leadership which 
was to be his one day. 

For he not only wrote down his thoughts, he 
spoke them out. For the boy's mind was like 
a living spring, it had to bubble over. If he 
found no comrades to listen to his fun or his 
earnest— and he usually did find them— but if 
not, then the woods, the birds, the very frogs 
must listen in their way; for an audience he 
must and would have. Year after year he 
went on preparing for the time when great 
words of his should help to sway the hearts of 
the nation into daring to be honest and just. 
For no man on the face of the earth, no matter 
what his name or rank, can ever be greater, or 
so great as the man who helps to turn the lives 
of other men into noble thoughts and deeds. 
So, Lincoln began early; and he kept at it all 
his life. For the man to whom the hardest 
work of the world is given has no time to be 
idle; he does not get it done by letting things 
come along as they will. 



vin. 

Among His Comrades. 

After Little Pigeon Creek became more 
settled, there was frequently preaching at the 
meeting house there. Mrs. Sally Lincoln al- 
ways went, and insisted upon her husband 
accompanying her. When the children were 
left at home after their elders were out of sight, 
the family Bible would come down from the 
shelf and Abe would find a text, and when a 
hymn or two had been sung he would start off 
upon a sermon. Sometimes this was earnest 
enough; but, generally, it was an imitation of 
some traveling preacher that they had heard, 
and was excellent mimicry. 

Abraham was not a perfect boy, and he was 
far from being a " goody-goody" boy. He 
liked fun and plenty of it, as all persons do who 
are capable of hard work. Some of his em- 
ployers said of him that he "liked his dinner 
and his play better than his work." But if 
61 



62 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

shirking had been his habit, he would never 
have been sought after everywhere, as he was, 
to do all kinds of hard work that others failed in, 
and to help out in an emergency. The fact 
was that he always had his book at hand to read 
in his leisure moments, he was always studying 
and thinking out questions that came to him 
with his reading; and the people around him did 
not understand it; they thought that work like 
this was idleness. 

Then, it probably was aggravating to a 
farmer in a hurry to get his harvest in to find 
Abe mounted on a stump making burlesque 
speeches or delivering comic sermons while the 
hired hands stood or sat about him in delight, 
and the harvest had to wait. He used to anger 
the persons at whom his satires and chronicles 
were directed and make fun of them for the 
rest of the community. He was descended from 
Quakers and had a real love of peace ; but when 
he was fairly in a quarrel, the other side gener- 
ally had the worst of it. 

The people among whom Lincoln lived at 
that time would seem very strange to us. Their 
houses were for the most part of one room built 
of round logs with the bark on. Their dress 
was principally of tanned deer-hide which was 
very uncomfortable when the wearer was caught 
in a shower, it shrank and grew so tight. Their 



AMONG HIS COMRADES. 63 

shoes were made of the same, and somebody 
called a wet moccasin "a decent way of going 
barefoot." 

Pigeon Creek was much interested in politics ; 
and young Lincoln soon began to give these a 
good share of his attention. It was no wonder ; 
for they were largely discussed in neighborly 
visits and chats. In Pigeon Creek a whole fam- 
ily would go over to call upon another family 
and always find a welcome. If there happened 
not to be chairs and benches enough for the 
whole party to sit down upon, some were always 
ready to be satisfied with the floor. If apples 
were scarce, or their hosts had used up their 
supply of these, "a plate of raw potatoes or tur- 
nips, nicely washed, could be offered instead, 
with a bottle of whiskey ; and there was the very 
soul of liberality in the offering." It has been 
said before that Abraham could never bring 
himself to use any kind of intoxicating liquor, 
and after a while he used to speak and write 
against it. 

Abraham in going from house to house and 
farm to farm among these people was learning 
much of their character which, later, was of 
great use to him. And he, no doubt, remem- 
bered many of their old superstitions. They 
thought a great deal of luck, and used to believe 
in witchcraft; when a person thought himself 



64 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

bewitched, lie used to shoot ''at the image of the 
witch with a bullet melted out of a half dollar." 
If a dog crossed a hunter's path it spoiled his 
day, unless he at once hooked his little fingers 
together and pulled until the dog had taken 
himself out of sight. They believed in witch- 
hazel, or the divining rod, and thought a great 
deal of "cure by faith," perhaps as much as 
many do today. If a wagon with a load of 
baskets drove past a house it meant rain ; they 
had rules for plantings and sowings, and all 
farm work ; they must fell trees for fence-rails 
before noon; fences built when there was no 
moon would give way; but that was the right 
time for planting potatoes; they had much faith 
in the influence of the moon. 

But with all the superstitions about fence- 
rails, it never occurred to Abe, or anybody else, 
that the rails he and John Hanks split and put 
around the new home of the family when the 
Lincolns first moved to Illinois would ever be 
heard of throughout the nation. Nobody then 
foresaw the day that John Hanks would walk 
into a public meeting with two of these rails on 
his shoulder, and kindle the whole country to 
enthusiasm by means of them and what they told 
of Abraham Lincoln's faithful work and his 
ability to conquer all the obstacles of his life and 



AMONG HIS COMRADES. 65 

stand the ideal of the working man who had 
made the best of American opportunities. 

It was when the family were on their way 
to the Illinois home in the March of 1830, a 
two weeks' tramp over roads so muddy as 
to be almost impassable, that one of the lovable 
traits of Lincoln's character came out. After 
crossing one of the swollen and dangerous 
streams on their passage, it was found that a 
little dog belonging to the Lincolns had fallen 
behind on the march and had reached the oppo- 
site side of the river too late. There he stood 
whining and leaping in terror and making pite- 
ous appeal to his owners. For the little creature 
was afraid to plunge into the water running over 
the broken ice. The people thought that it 
would not pay to go back for a dog; they were 
anxious to get on and could not think of putting 
the oxen over again. So they resolved to go on 
and leave the little animal to his fate which 
would have been sad enough. But Abe was of 
a different mind; he pulled off his shoes and 
stockings, waded through the icy water and back 
again bringing the happy dog under his arm. 

Lincoln had been more and more away from 
his father's farm and among those of the neigh- 
bors where he was earning wages ; he had come 
to perceive that he must work for himself, since 



66 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

his father would never do anything worth while. 
But when Thomas Lincoln came to doing less 
and less, leaving his work for others, Mrs. Lin- 
coln insisted that somebody must keep things in 
order about the place; and this Abe and Dennis 
Hanks did. Then when finding that the region 
of Indiana where they had settled was unhealth- 
ful, and going to Illinois where John Hanks had 
already established himself, Abraham did all 
that he could to make the new home comfortable. 
How good it seems to remember that these very 
rails which he split in helping to build the fence 
for the step-mother whom he always loved and 
cared for should have been heard of all over 
the land ! 

At this time he was twenty-one; and he 
started in life for himself. But he seemed to 
have nothing except the right to come and go as 
he liked. He had no trade or profession; it 
seemed as if he could be nothing but wood- 
chopper, boatman, or a farmer. But he could 
do hard work and he had employment. He did 
not love drudgery, but he did it faithfully, like 
everything else he did; and the people on the 
Sangamon River began to find out how interest- 
ing he was, as those in Indiana where he used to 
live had done. 

For all the time although he was in appear- 
ance so rough, and seemed to be only a common 



AMONG HIS COMRADES. 67 

workman, a wonderful genius was in him that 
the men around him were already beginning to 
discover. He was one day to be a great orator; 
and he was always preparing for it. In Indiana 
debating societies and all meetings had heard 
his voice. And now in Illinois the autumn he 
arrived, there was quite a political excite- 
ment and a man traveling through the country 
stump-speaking, came to Decatur where he made 
a speech. John Hanks was contemptuous. He 
declared that Abe Lincoln could beat that all 
hollow. "Abe, try him on," he pursued. A 
box was turned over for the young man to 
stand upon; and then and there Abraham Lin- 
coln began his career as stump-speaker in Illi- 
nois. There must have been a kindness and a 
charm about him; for the man whom he had 
beaten completely was astonished and asked 
him "where he learned to do it?" 

All that year Lincoln was still a farm hand. 
But another year something else opened for him. 



IX. 

His Trips to New Orleans. 

To read about places and people, and to see 
with one's own eyes are so different! It must 
have been that the boy Abe often longed to 
catch at least a glimpse of the great world he 
was so fond of studying about. He once asked 
a friend to recommend him to some steamboat 
on the Ohio River. But when the friend re- 
minded him that his father had a right to his 
time for a few years longer, Abe gave up the 
idea of going out into the world, for a while. 
But in 1828 the opportunity came to him, and he 
took it eagerly. This was when he was living 
in Indiana. Mr. Gentry the great man of the 
neighborhood wanted a young man to go down 
to New Orleans in a flatboat with his son, the 
young man who had married Abe's little school- 
mate, Polly Roby. He offered Abe the position 
of "bow-hand," or bow-oar, with his rations 
and eight dollars a month and his return passage 



HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 69 

on a steamboat paid ; for the boat could not come 
back; flatboats go down stream, not up. The 
boat was to be loaded with bacon and other prod- 
uce for a trading trip down the Mississippi. 

The money was much to Abe who had none. 
But the prospect of getting a glimpse of the 
world outside his narrow home was much more 
to him. 

There were sights and suggestions in this 
trip which Abraham never forgot. Before this 
time he had written an essay on temperance 
which had been printed in a country newspaper, 
and he was eager to do much more. He had 
written another about the necessity of education 
for all the people. He began early in life to 
think of the people and their needs and rights. 
He had seen how injurious degraded poverty 
and intemperance were to white people. On this 
trip he saw also the hardest side of slavery, 
negroes on the boats and the wharves working 
and lashed by their overseers, negroes in the 
cotton fields, also driven and lashed when any 
fault, or even the unjust anger of the overseer 
brought punishment upon them. And, worst of 
all, he saw men and women and children in the 
slave markets handled and bought and sold as if 
they were beasts of burden. He never forgot 
these sights. He had been opposed to slavery 
before that time ; but such scenes helped him to 



70 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

know all the better why he ought to do what was 
in his power to prevent the extension of slavery 
into new Territories and States acquired by our 
government. 

But all this came later. During his voyage 
he helped to draw up the clumsy flatboat at the 
different wharves where they stopped, and in 
selling the goods the boys both did well. Gentry 
made more money; but Lincoln brought home 
a wider knowledge and understanding of the 
things that they had both seen on the trip. One 
night they had quite an adventure. The flat- 
boat was attacked by negroes who attempted to 
rob it ; and both Lincoln and Gentry had to make 
a brave defence to drive off the thieves. But 
they did it. 

It was two years later, in the winter of 1830- 
31, that the second opportunity to go down to 
New Orleans came to Lincoln. This time it was 
to be in company with John Hanks, his mother's 
cousin; and afterward John Johnston, Lincoln's 
foster brother, was taken into the party. They 
were to go with a merchant, Denton Offutt, and 
to meet him at Springfield. So, in the spring 
when the rivers broke up and the melting snows 
poured into every brook and stream, the three 
young men paddled down the Sangamon River, 
perhaps the only way they could get there, to 



HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 71 

within five miles of Springfield and then walked 
these five miles to keep their engagement with 
Offutt. 

But Offutt had been attending to so many- 
other things that he was so far from being ready 
for his boatmen that he had no flatboat bought. 
If they wanted to go to New Orleans, the first 
thing they must do was to build one. They cut 
the timber and built the boat— a good, strong 
one— and went down the current of the Sanga- 
mon in it to New Salem. You will not find it 
on the map; for today there is no New Salem; 
that queer little town was settled only a short 
time before Lincoln went there to live, and all 
went to nothing after he had gone away from it 
to make his home in Springfield. 

Lincoln's first appearance in New Salem 
was made in a way that interested the people in 
him. Offutt 's boat had stuck on a milldam on 
the river, and there it hung, the fore part high 
in air, the stern shipping water from the Sanga- 
mon. About all the people of New Salem stood 
there on the banks, watching the unhappy boat ; 
and nobody knew how to do anything to help 
out matters except "the bow-oar," a great tall 
fellow "with his trousers rolled up some five 
feet" says an account of him. That was Lin- 
coln. He waded about the boat, rigged up some 
contrivance to unload the cargo and tilt the 



72 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

boat. Then he bored a hole through the bottom 
and let out the water ; and straightened the boat 
and brought it safely to mooring below the dam. 
Then the hole was stopped up, the cargo put in 
again, and the boat went on her way. His 
employer was full of admiration for Lincoln's 
cleverness. The party made a quick trip down 
the Sangamon to the Illinois, and from there 
down the Mississippi to New Orleans. It was 
in some respects like the former voyage with 
young Gentry. But Lincoln was older and all 
that he saw made a deeper impression upon him. 
John Hanks said of Lincoln on this voyage when 
he saw the slaves chained, whipped and 
scourged: "Lincoln saw it; his heart bled; said 
nothing much, was silent, looked bad." 

Ten years later he made another water trip 
with Joshua Speed, a friend whom he knew in 
Kentucky. Long afterward he said to him, 
speaking of the "tedious trip" on the steamer 
from Louisville to St. Louis: "You may re- 
member, I well do, that from Louisville to the 
mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a 
dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That 
sight was a continual torment to me, and I see 
something like it every time I touch the Ohio, 
or any other slave border. It is not fair for 
you to assume that I have no interest in a thing 
which has, and continually exercises, the power 



HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 73 

of making me miserable." So, from his early- 
youth Lincoln had the thought of slavery and 
the hatred of it on his heart. But he never 
wanted freedom by violence ; but by the laws of 
his country ; and he longed for the day of free- 
dom. He could not see that God would grant 
to him as a right and a duty to give freedom to 
four millions of human beings. That was not 
his business now. All he had to do was the best 
at the time ; and that he always did ; he walked 
as straight on toward his work as if he had seen 
it, always getting ready for what was to come. 
Abraham Lincoln's fame and honors did not 
come to him by chance; the best things never 
do; he earned them. 

After this trip to New Orleans on Offutt's 
boat, the party went up the river again in early 
summer, and when they reached St. Louis, 
Abraham and his foster brother, John Johns- 
ton, walked across country to see Mr. Thomas 
Lincoln who by that time had made another 
move. Abraham never lost sight of his parents 
even when his home was no longer with them. 
From time to time he paid them visits, and even 
when he himself was very poor he helped them 
out with money. His only own sister, Sarah, 
had married and died while they were in 
Indiana. 

When Lincoln went back to New Salem, on 



74 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

the day of his arrival a local election was 
being held. But one of the two clerks was ill 
and the question was where to find a substitute 
who could write. "When young Lincoln ap- 
peared upon the scene, the people asked him if 
he could write. He said that he " could make 
a few rabbit tracks." So, he was the clerk for 
that day. The people remembered his wading 
into the Sangamon River and rescuing the flat- 
boat stuck high and dry on the milldam. Now 
they learned another accomplishment of his. 
Soon they were to find out others. 

For Mr. Offutt had hired him to help keep 
store which Lincoln did when his employer's 
goods arrived. Meanwhile, he found odds and 
ends of work to do. Mr. Offutt was so fond of 
Lincoln and so proud of him that he was never 
tired of boasting about him. His clerk was the 
most wonderful young man, he said ; there was 
nothing he did not know; there was nothing he 
could not do. 

There was a set of roughs in New Salem ; they 
called themselves "Clary's Grove Boys." 
They did all sorts of rowdyish things and 
when strangers came to town they were apt to 
give them somewhat of a hazing to find out 
what stuff they were made of. These Clary's 
Grove Boys were tired of hearing Abraham Lin- 
coln praised up to the skies, and they made up 



HIS TRIPS TO NEW ORLEANS. 75 

their minds to "take him down a bit." And 
they proposed a wrestling match. Lincoln 
wanted nothing of all this "wooling and pull- 
ing" as he called it. But the Clary's Grove 
Boys had a champion, Jack Armstrong, who, 
they were sure, could beat Lincoln, or anybody 
else, and they were determined to try it. So 
Abe was obliged to show his mettle. Jack Arm- 
strong had a bet to throw him. 



X. 

How He Kept Shop; What Came of It. 

When Jack Armstrong closed with the tall 
stranger for his wrestling match he soon found 
that he had got hold of new material; he had 
never wrestled with anybody like him before. 
The Clary's Grove Boys all clustered around; 
and when they found that their pet and bully, 
Jack Armstrong, was not likely to come out vic- 
tor, they all gathered about Lincoln and tried 
to pull him down. By 'that time Lincoln's tem- 
per was fully aroused. He caught Armstrong 
and held him in his arms like a child and nearly 
choked the life out of him. For a minute it 
looked as if there would be a general fight. But 
Lincoln with his back against the wall standing 
so strong and unafraid made them change their 
minds; they respected him; they admired him. 
As for Jack Armstrong whom he had so thor- 
oughly beaten, he became one of Lincoln's 
warmest admirers and champions. 



HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 77 

The young man had no more battles to fight 
with the Clary's Grove Boys. Indeed, he often 
interfered, to prevent their ill treatment of 
strangers and became a general peacemaker in 
the neighborhood. Nobody questioned that he 
knew how to fight; so it was well understood 
that his suggestions of peace never came from 
fear, and he was listened to and respected. It 
seems strange that this victory of his over that 
wild set of young men should have really made 
a difference in his life, and given him a position 
of influence and a certain authority in the com- 
munity and prepared the way for his political 
career. But it did so. His personal strength 
and his knowledge how to use this made him 
looked up to by the people of that new country 
where physical strength and skill counted for so 
much. And his other qualities did the rest. 

For the people of New Salem soon found out 
how interesting he was and what good stories he 
could tell; his encounter with Jack Armstrong 
traveled far and they admired his pluck and 
courage as well as his wit. They admired, too, 
his being able to fill in all the hard places and 
bring things out straight when other people 
could not do it. For Lincoln was always ready 
to take trouble. If a thing was to be done 
whether in work or study, he never hesitated 
because it might happen that he did not want 



78 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

to do it. Indeed, there never was a human 
being in the world worth anything, and there 
never will be one, who has not done and who 
will not do hundreds of things that he did not 
or will not want to do. This strengthens the 
mind and will as truly as exercise strengthens 
the muscles. So, Abe had his good times when 
people came around him and listened to his 
stories and his comical rhymes and they all 
laughed and joked together. 

But there was something more, another trait 
in him that won him a nickname which after- 
ward became known all over the country; he 
never lost it, for he always deserved it. For it 
was while he was keeping store for Mr. Offutt 
that he gained the name of "honest Abe." Dr. 
Holland tells us how Lincoln could not rest 
for an instant if he had, even without meaning 
it, defrauded anybody. He says that one day 
Lincoln sold a woman a little bill of goods. She 
paid it and went away. When he came to add 
up the bill again, to make sure of its being cor- 
rect, he found that he had taken six and a quar- 
ter cents too much from her. It was night. He 
shut and locked the store and walked two or 
three miles to the woman's house and gave back 
to her the money he had unconsciously de- 
frauded her of. At another time he was just 
closing the store for the night when a woman 



HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 79 

came in and asked for half a pound of tea. He 
weighed it out. She paid for it and went home. 
And Lincoln closed the store and went home also. 
But the next morning he found that there had 
been a quarter instead of a half pound weight on 
the scales ; he had sold the woman only a quarter 
of a pound of tea, and she paid for half a pound. 
He shut up the store again and took a long walk 
before breakfast to carry the woman the rest of 
her tea. Nothing was too trifling for Lincoln to 
be honest about. For this honesty in the goods 
under his hand was only evidence of the deeper 
honesty to truth and principle within him which 
one day was to win him the confidence of the 
nation. 

But Lincoln's love of peace was founded on 
no submission to bullying, as he one day showed 
while he was in Mr. Offutt's store. A rough 
fellow was making himself especially offensive 
by loud swearing when women were present. 
Lincoln asked him to be silent. This was 
enough to enrage the bully, and Lincoln had to 
follow him into the street and fight it out with 
him then and there. The battle did not last 
long; Lincoln threw him to the ground at once 
and picking a handful of dog-fennel which grew 
all about, he rubbed the fellow's face and eyes 
with it until he cried out for mercy. Then Lin- 
coln having punished the rough, brought water 



80 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

and bathed his face and eyes and sent him away 
comforted and a good deal wiser. It did not 
need many fights like this to make people let 
Lincoln alone. 

While he was clerk in (Mutt's store he 
began to study English grammar. He con- 
sulted Mr. Menton Graham, the schoolmaster 
of New Salem, and his friend, upon the matter, 
and the latter advised him by all means to study 
grammar if he intended ever to speak in public. 
Lincoln learned of a text book upon this subject 
owned by a man living seven or eight miles 
away. His long limbs soon measured this dis- 
tance and he bought the book. The work of Mr. 
Offutt's store did not take up all his time, and 
his friend, Mr. Herndon, tells of how young Lin- 
coln would stretch out at full length on the 
counter— it must have been a long counter— his 
head propped against a stack of calico prints, 
studying his grammar; or sometimes he went 
off under the shade of a tree and spent "hours 
at a time in a determined effort to fix in his 
mind the arbitrary rule that 'adverbs qualify 
verbs, adjectives and other adverbs.' " Often 
Mr. Graham helped him. After his grammar, 
he would turn to mathematics for "relaxation." 
Thus he was studying, studying, reading, read- 
ing — a habit that in some form he kept up all 
his life. 



HOW HE KEPT SHOP. 81 

In the evenings Lincoln would often go over 
to the cooper shop and read there by burning 
shavings, one kindled from another, because 
candles were scarce and dear and his small 
wages could not afford these. That year there 
were debating clubs, and Abe used to walk six 
or seven miles to some of these. One of them, 
however, was held at an old storehouse in New 
Salem. It was at this club that Lincoln made 
his first speech in Illinois. The men in these 
clubs were all rough, uneducated men. Still, 
the practice was good for the young politician. 
This first speech of his was upon a subject of 
great interest to the people of the region who 
believed that the Sangamon River, a branch of 
the Illinois, was navigable, and that Springfield 
could be reached by water from the Ohio. 

When the little steamer, "Talisman," made 
the attempt, Lincoln was her pilot, and carried 
her past the dam above New Salem. But no- 
body can make a boat float in water too shallow 
for it; and Lincoln showed his skill by getting 
the "Talisman" down stream again. 



XI. 
The Black Hawk War. 

A lady who used to know Lincoln when he was 
a school boy, told his friend, Mr. Herndon, of 
the school exhibitions of those days — declama- 
tions, dialogues and debates. The declama- 
tions were chiefly from a book called "The Ken- 
tucky Preceptor." Lincoln had often used it, 
she said. The questions for discussion were 
such as called for thought and power. One of 
these was: "Which has the most right to com- 
plain, the Indian, or the Negro?" If Lincoln 
had ever studied it, and we may be sure that 
nothing in the book had escaped him, he may 
have had a different opinion from most people 
as to the rights and wrongs of the Indians and 
our general policy toward them. 

But when Black Hawk, the old Sac chief, 
kept up his raiding of land ceded to the white 
man and at last brought over a large band of 
warriors having been promised aid by other 

82 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 83 

tribes, Gov. Keynolds called for volunteers to 
move the tribe of Black Hawk across the Missis- 
sippi, for the settlers in the neighborhood had 
been in terror. In the summer of 1831, after 
having been driven across the Mississippi, Black 
Hawk had made a solemn treaty never to come 
to the east side again, unless by permission of 
the President or of the Governor of Illinois. 
But in the summer of 1832 there he was again. 
He said that he and the young men with him 
had come to ' ' plant corn. ' ' But he marched up 
the Bock River, expecting to be joined by other 
tribes. These, however, would not come to him. 
The truth was that the poor chief was old and 
loved the lands where the graves of his fathers 
were and where he would have his own to be; 
and, most of all, could not keep away from the 
place where his beloved daughter was buried. 
Every year he had made a pilgrimage to her 
grave, and he was not willing to give this up, 
even if he died for it. 

General Atkinson commanding the United 
States troops there sent a command to Black 
Hawk to return. But Black Hawk refused, and 
the Governor called for volunteers. Abraham 
Lincoln was one of the first to respond. In 
those days the volunteer companies chose their 
captains just like an election. When this com- 
pany assembled on the green and some one pro- 



84 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

posed an election, three-fourths of the men 
walked across to where Lincoln was standing; 
that was their way of voting. The man who 
received the other quarter of the votes was one 
of some wealth from another town ; and Lincoln 
had once tried to work for him, but he had been 
so overbearing that he could not be endured. 
Now when the majority had decided, all the 
others turned and came with them. So, Lin- 
coln was this man's captain. But he was too 
generous ever to take advantage of this. 

Lincoln has said that nothing ever gave him 
more pleasure than this first recognition of him 
as a leader. How little the young man under- 
stood then that he was to learn something of 
army life that would be of service to him in the 
great struggle of the nation where he was to be, 
not captain of a company, but commander-in- 
chief of army and navy, as every President is. 
The volunteers did not understand military 
rules as the regular soldiers did, and many 
things in their drilling and getting into order 
were amusing. Some of Lincoln's droll stories 
were about the drills he used to give his men. 
One morning he was marching at the head of his 
company. The men were marching twenty 
abreast when they came to a gate. They could 
not possibly get through the gate twenty 
abreast and thev could not change their order 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 85 

without the command of their captain, and their 
captain could not remember the military term to 
turn the conrpany endwise. But up they were 
marching nearer and nearer to the gate, and 
something had to be done. Lincoln had not 
taken boats up and down shallow rivers and 
slipped them off their grounding on falls, and 
done so many difficult tasks, to be stopped by a 
gatepost. "Halt!" he shouted, facing round to 
the men. "This company will break ranks for 
two minutes and form again on the other side 
of the gate!" So they got through all right, 
but not in military style. 

But if the young captain was not skilled in 
military manoeuvres, he had plenty of wit and 
keenness and was never slow to defend those 
needing defence, no matter to whom he spoke. 
The officers and soldiers of the regular army 
despised and laughed at the volunteers, as all 
regular army men do. Lincoln could not help 
this. But there was another thing quite differ- 
ent. For they disliked the volunteers so much 
that they were unfair to them in rations and 
pay and in duties assigned to them. One day 
an improper order came to Captain Lincoln. He 
obeyed it. But he went immediately to protest 
against it and against the injustice done his 
men and the other volunteers. Mr. Stoddard 



86 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

in his "Life of Lincoln" tells that he said to the 
officer : 

"Sir, yon forget that we are not under the 
rules and regulations of the War Department 
at Washington; are only volunteers under the 
orders and regulations of Illinois. Keep ;in 
your own sphere and there will he no difficulty ; 
hut resistance will hereafter be made to your 
unjust orders. And, further, my men must be 
equal in all particulars, in rations, arms, camps, 
&c, to the regular army. " 

Things improved at once. Lincoln had won. 
But it was a brave thing for him to do and very 
expressive of his character. For when he knew 
he was in the right, there was no human being 
whom he was afraid to speak to and declare the 
right; and all his life he was studying how to 
be able to say this right in the clearest way and 
make most people see it and believe it. All the 
volunteers who were better fed and better 
treated for this bold protest held Lincoln in 
higher esteem than ever. 

When his company's term of service was over 
and the company had been mustered out, Lin- 
coln with a number of others re-enlisted. Then 
he was a private ; and he enjoyed himself during 
the short time he was there. For he was out of 
service before the battle, which was more a 
massacre, in which nearly all the young braves 



THE BLACK HAWK WAR. 87 

were killed and the Indians completely defeated. 
When Black Hawk was captured and carried to 
Washington, he said to President Jackson: "I 
am a man, and you are another. I did not 
expect to conquer the white people. I took up 
the hatchet to avenge injuries which could no 
longer be borne." Nicolai and Hay whose 
history gives this speech of the old Indian chief, 
refer at the same time to Lincoln's call for 
troops at the beginning of the civil war, " 'to 
redress wrongs already long enough endured.' " 

It is good to know that Lincoln was not in any 
fight with these poor savages whose greatest 
fault often was that we wanted their land and 
got it at much too cheap a price, since we made 
them sell it. But he, really, almost got into a 
fight once with his own men while he was cap- 
tain, and that was for an Indian. Mr. Stoddard 
tells the story. An old Indian trusting to the 
protection of a written passport from Gen. 
Cass and saying that he was a friend of the 
white man— as many Indians were— one day 
came into camp. The soldiers had been having 
a hard time of it with short rations and other 
privations and they were all ready to think 
every Indian a kind of wild beast to be killed 
wherever they could get him. 

The poor old savage was alone, helpless, 
hungry and trying to get food and he saw 



88 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

a host of angry men rushing at him to mur- 
der him. They had almost done it, when a tall 
man in captain's uniform rushed between them 
and the Indian. "Men! This must not b& 
done ! He must not be killed by us ! " cried Lin- 
coln. "But Captain, that Indian is a spy!" 
cried one in the crowd. The men were so angry 
and so determined, that for a few moments it 
looked as if they might kill their Captain him- 
self rather than be balked of their pray. But 
at last they yielded sullenly. 

That fight of Lincoln's for the life of the 
harmless old Indian was the best fight of all 
that war. And his saving the life of the old 
man the best victory. 




LINCOLN IN EARLY LIFE. 
From a woodcut. 



XII. 

Stumping for Election. 

When Lincoln came home from the war with 
Black Hawk and his Indians, the election for 
the State Legislature was only ten days off and 
he had offered himself as candidate for repre- 
sentative from his own district. In those days 
candidates were not nominated as they are now 
by convention; but a man stood forth and 
announced himself as candidate and declared 
his political principles and made speeches at 
different places to induce people to vote for 
him. At this time Lincoln, as he always did, 
announced his platform clearly in a circular 
dated in March before he went to the war. He 
was a Whig, favored a national bank, a liberal 
system of internal improvements and a high pro- 
tective tariff. He took up all the leading ques- 
tions that at the time interested the people of 
the State, railroads, river navigation, especially 
the question of improving the Sangamon River 



90 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

in which his county was much interested, and 
other matters. He dwelt particularly on the 
need of public education. In ending he said: 
"I was born and have ever remained in the 
most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy 
or popular friends or relatives to recommend 
me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the 
independent voters of the county ; and if elected, 
they will have conferred a favor upon me for 
which I shall be unremitting in my labors to 
compensate. But if," he finished, "the good 
people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me 
in the background, I have been too familiar 
with disappointments to be very much cha^ 
grined. ' ' 

The time was too short to do much electioneer- 
ing. Lincoln made a few speeches in the neigh- 
borhood of New Salem and one at Springfield. 
He had often a rough audience. Once he saw a 
ruffian attack a friend of his in the crowd, and 
as the contest was not going as Lincoln wished, 
he stepped down from the stump, seized the 
fighting rowdy by the neck and threw him about 
ten feet; then he mounted the platform again 
and went on with his speech, his logic unchecked 
by the episode. The day Lincoln went to 
Springfield, Judge Logan who was afterward 
his law partner, saw him for the first time. "He 
was a very tall, gawky, rough-looking fellow 



STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 91 

then," the Judge said of Lincoln, "his panta- 
loons didn't meet his shoes by six inches. But 
after he began speaking I became very much 
interested in him. He made a very sensible 
speech. His manner was very much the same 
as in after life ; that is, the same peculiar char- 
acteristics were apparent then, though in after 
years he evinced more knowledge and experi- 
ence. But he had then the same novelty and the 
same peculiarity in presenting his ideas. He 
had the same individuality that he kept through 
all his life." 

We can believe this. There was never but 
one Abraham Lincoln and he could not have 
been like anybody else had he tried ; and he was 
too busy in his work to ever think of trying. 

He was defeated in this election, the only 
time in his life in which he was defeated when 
he went before the people. If it had depended 
upon the people of New Salem, things would 
have gone differently, for he was such a favorite 
in his own town that he had two hundred and 
seventy-seven votes while only three went 
against him. But this defeat was not all loss; 
he had had practice in public speaking, and he 
had made friends of importance, Judge Logan, 
Major Stuart and others; he was getting to 
be better known, and wherever he was known 
he was liked. 



92 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

But he was face to face with the question how 
to get a living. He had been in the army, he 
was in politics, he ought not to be a day laborer ; 
he wanted some occupation that would support 
him and at the same time give him opportunity 
to study. Years before he had read his first 
law book, "The Eevised Statutes of Indiana." 
Other law books had followed ; but not yet had 
he seriously devoted himself to the study of law. 
He meant to do it, however; and he wanted time 
for this while he was in some other way earning 
his daily bread. Mr. Offutt's business had gone 
to wreck. Two of his friends in New Salem, 
the Herndon brothers, were then keeping a 
grocery store which they wanted to sell out; it 
was one of those country stores where every- 
thing was kept. One brother sold out his share 
to an idle fellow named Berry, the other one sold 
out to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and Berry, 
now partners, also bought out another man and 
thus became owners of the only store in the 
village. They hadn't any money with which to 
do this buying; they gave notes for everything. 

Now, if Lincoln had been destined for a multi- 
millionaire, he would soon have freed himself 
from his worthless partner and from little to 
larger his ventures would have grown ; he would 
have thrown up other interests and gone into 
making money. But making money was the one 



STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 93 

thing Lincoln could never do, which does not 
mean that from early childhood he did not sup- 
port himself and help others ; he never was so 
needy that he could not lend a helping hand; 
when he was going about from place to place 
often working for his board alone, it used to be 
said of him that he visited the fatherless and the 
widows and chopped their wood. But the nation 
and the world have reason to be grateful that 
Lincoln was not built for a millionaire or cared 
to be one. He is one of our noblest examples 
of what can be done and won, without wealth ; 
and it is worth remembering. For the man who 
gives his money for a good cause does much. 
But the man who gives his life does far more. 
It is quite a feat to make four million dollars. 
But it is a wonderful destiny to make four mil- 
lion men free. To this task in the preparation 
and the doing Abraham Lincoln gave his life, in 
strength, in work; and, at last, his very life's 
blood in martyrdom. It costs a great price to 
do a great work. 

It was not strange that Lincoln's heart was 
elsewhere than in weighing out sugars and teas 
—although we know that when he did weigh he 
took care to do it honestly— and he thought 
more of the time that his business would give 
him than of the money which ought to come 
from it. So, he would often lie on the counter 



94 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

when no one was there, or on his back under a 
tree, his feet against the trunk, with his books 
and leave the storekeeping to Berry. And 
Berry, although he had no ambition for politi- 
cal life and ought to have looked after the store, 
preferred to spend much of his time in the back 
shop drinking up the liquors which were then 
kept in these country stores. As no business 
looks after itself, it was not very long before 
matters went from bad to worse. The store, as 
Lincoln put it, "winked out." 

Then, the promissory notes were to be paid 
and neither partner had any money to pay them 
with. Berry settled his share of the business 
by running away. So, the whole burden of 
responsibility fell upon Lincoln. He took it 
upon his broad and honest shoulders and car^ 
ried it for years and years ; and so heavy a bur- 
den was it for a young man struggling for a 
living that he and his friends used to call it 
"the national debt," and so have their joke over 
what was in itself very far from a joke. It was 
years, as has been said, before that burden of 
debt was lifted from Lincoln's shoulders, and 
then only by his having paid it little by little, 
but wholly paid it— another evidence of how 
well he deserved his title of "honest Abe." 

For a time after his store "winked out," he 
did whatever he could find to do, often working 



STUMPING FOR ELECTION. 95 

for his board alone. In 1833 lie was appointed 
postmaster of New Salem and held this office 
for three years. The salary must have been 
very small but there was no heavy work con- 
nected with the office, for the letters were so few 
that he used to be himself the walking post-office. 
People would look him up and ask for letters, 
and Lincoln would take off his hat and search 
for them there ; his hat was the largest mailbag 
necessary! It is said of him— and we must 
believe it— that he read all the papers and maga- 
zines that came to his post-office. 

Dr. Holland tells a beautiful story of him in 
connection with this office. He says that sev- 
eral years afterwards, after Lincoln had become 
a lawyer and had been to the legislature and 
had passed through great poverty and had many 
hard experiences, one day when he was in his 
partner's law-office, an agent of the post-office 
department came in and inquired for Abraham 
Lincoln. When Mr. Lincoln answered, the 
agent said he had called to collect a balance due 
the department since the New Salem post-office 
had been given up. Mr. Lincoln looked per- 
plexed for a moment, and some friends in the 
office said: "Lincoln, if you're in want of 
money, let us help you." Lincoln said nothing, 
but rose and pulled out from a pile of books a 
little old trunk and asked the agent how much 



96 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

the debt was. The man told him. Lincoln 
opened the trunk, pulled out a little package of 
coin wrapped up in a cotton rag, and counted 
out the exact sum amounting to over seventeen 
dollars. After the agent had gone, Lincoln 
said quietly that he never used any man's money 
but his own. In all his straits he had been too 
truly " honest Abe" to touch that money. 

After the store was done for, when Lincoln 
was looking for something else to do, work came 
to him. John Calhoun of Springfield, surveyor 
of Sangamon County, needed an assistant, and 
asked Lincoln to help him and gave him all the 
work in the immediate neighborhood of New 
Salem. 

Lincoln accepted the position and the work. 
He knew nothing whatever of surveying ; but he 
was going to know a great deal about it, and 
very soon, too ; he was not the man to undertake 
any work and not do it well. So he began to 
study surveying with the same energy that he 
had studied everything else. Mr. Calhoun lent 
him a book ; the second master, Mentor Graham, 
lent him his aid; and in six weeks' close study 
Lincoln was a surveyor. Finally, he became a 
better one than Mr. Calhoun himself. 



XIII. 

In VandaliaT^ 

Lincoln, as has been said, was a Whig. Mr. 
Calhoun was a strong Democrat. Before the 
young man would accept the position of assist- 
ant surveyor from him, he inquired if he should 
be expected to renounce his principles and turn 
Democrat ; for much as he needed the work, he 
would not take it on those terms. And he did 
not. It was not a small matter to fit himself 
for the work so thoroughly and quickly as he 
did; it cost him very hard study and plenty of 
it. That he was ready to give; but he would 
not sell his vote to any man. 

As a surveyor he was so fair and just that he 
was often sent for to settle disputed boundaries. 
Herndon tells an incident where after much dis- 
cussion the parties agreed to send for Lincoln 
and to abide by his decision. " 'He came with 
compass, flag-staff and chain,' " said Mr. 

97 



98 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

McHenry whom Herndon quotes. " 'He stopped 
with me three or four days,' " he added, 
" 'and surveyed the whole section. "When in 
the neighborhood of the disputed corner by 
actual survey, he called for his staff and driving 
it in the ground at a certain spot said, ' ' Gentle- 
men, here is the corner." We dug down into 
the ground at the point indicated and lo ! there 
we found about six or eight inches of the orig- 
inal stake sharpened at the end, and beneath 
this was the usual piece of charcoal placed 
there by the surveyor who laid the ground off 
for the government many years before." Lin- 
coln had done so fairly and well that everybody 
went away satisfied. 

With his income as surveyor, small enough, 
and his salary as postmaster of New Salem, 
still smaller, Lincoln was getting on well — when, 
suddenly, something happened. He had never 
forgotten his notes given for the purchase of the 
store, and as he could, he was paying some- 
thing on them, scrimping himself in every way 
to do it. But one man grew impatient, sued 
him for his note and took away his personal 
possessions, the few he had, and, worse than 
that, sold his horse and surveying instruments 
to pay the debt. Then the young man was in a 
hard place; for he could not do surveying with- 



IN VANDALIA. 99 

out instruments. But friends bought in the 
property for him and gave him back his instru- 
ments and his horse, waiting until Lincoln could 
repay them. 

There is a proverb that a man who has friends 
must show himself friendly. Lincoln, certainly, 
did this to every one he could help, and with no 
thought whether he himself would ever gain by 
his kindness. It is told of him that one day 
when he was about fourteen miles from Spring- 
field he was overtaken by a man whom he knew 
very slightly, and who was in great haste to 
reach the land office in Spring-field before 
another man traveling on a different road. He 
explained to Lincoln that he wanted to enter a 
small tract of land which joined his ; but that this 
other man who was rich had made up his mind 
to get it, and would get it if he arrived first. 
But his own neighbors had advanced the neces- 
sary money and he could secure the land by 
being on hand before the other man. Lincoln 
looked at the speaker's tired horse and saw that 
it would give out before the journey's end if it 
were urged. "Here's my horse," he said. "He's 
fresh and full of grit ; there's no time to be lost; 
mount him and put him through. ' ' And he told 
the man where to leave the horse for him. At 
about dark when Lincoln rode in on the jaded 

L. OF C, 



100 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

horse which he had let take its time, he found 
the other man radiant ; he had arrived in season 
and secured his land. The two men were 
friends the rest of their lives although they were 
on opposite sides in politics. 

One man who knew Lincoln at this time says : 
"Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends." 
Another said of him that in every circle where 
he found himself, whether refined or uneducated, 
he was always the centre of attraction. One 
day when some of the boys from Illinois college 
went to see him, they found him flat on his back 
on a cellar door reading a newspaper. It is 
said that then Lincoln could repeat the whole 
of Burns and was a great student of Shake- 
speare. 

And while he was reading law and studying 
Shakespeare and the politics of the day at the 
same time, he was going about from place to 
place surveying, doing fine work in this occupa- 
tion, making new friends every day and keeping 
all the old ones, and getting ready for his nom- 
ination a second time as representative to the 
State Legislature. And this second time, in 
1834, he had no defeat, but was elected by a 
good majority. 

When Washington was a young man he was 
a surveyor, also. And the business gave him 



IN VANDALIA. 101 

such opportunity to see good land and to know 
it that he selected many choice acres which 
afterwards brought him in money. But Lin- 
coln never used his business for himself further 
than to receive pay for his work; he made no 
money out. of it. It seems as if his heart were 
set upon something before him to be done even 
when he could not yet see what it was, and he 
could not give his thoughts to other things. 
Some biographies of him tell us that he was so 
poor that when he was elected representative, 
he walked the hundred miles to Vandalia. But 
others tell us that he borrowed money from a 
friend that he might go to the capital in dress 
and conveyance suitable to a representative, and 
that he went there by stagecoach which was then 
the usual way of traveling. 

At this first session of the Legislature he was 
quiet and modest and did nothing to make him- 
self conspicuous. He was all the time learning, 
learning, not books alone, although he was still 
studying law harder than ever ; but he was get- 
ting into knowledge of men who make laws, was 
growing to perceive how to handle men, that is, 
how to handle them in law-making. He was 
born with great power to appeal to men of all 
ranks and touch their hearts and lead them. 
No doubt, when he sat there in his place among 



102 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

other representatives lie sometimes thought of a 
day when he had received one of the hard les- 
sons of his life, a lesson given by a snob in fine 
clothes to a man too great for him to under- 
stand although he was dressed like one of the 
roughest of country folk. Lincoln was always 
very fond of going into the courts and listening 
to the cases tried there. One day a Mr. Breck- 
inridge made a most vigorous and eloquent 
defence of his client. Lincoln, who had never 
heard so fine a speech, listened in delighted 
astonishment. When the case was over, Mr. 
Breckinridge was walking grandly out of the 
courtroom, when, straight in his path, stood 
this immense, raw-boned youth, stretching out 
a hand and arm with a sleeve far up his 
wrist, and congratulating Mr. Breckinridge 
upon his wonderful eloquence. The great man 
looked for a moment at the tall, ungainly youth, 
and without having the good manners to take 
his hand or to utter one word to him, he swept 
out of the courtroom, indignant at such a fel- 
low's having presumed to speak to him. This 
was what the young legislator might have 
recalled as he sat there listening to speeches or 
went about making acquaintance with his fellow 
legislators, some of whom in future days would 
be comrades of his, and others his opponents. 



IN VANDALIA. 103 

But little could the young man foresee in 
those days that he and this same snob of a Mr. 
Breckinridge would one day meet again, that 
time in Washington; and that when they met, 
this young man whose hand the snob had refused 
would then be President of the United States, 
and Mr. Breckinridge would be only too much 
honored by being spoken to by him. When that 
time arrived, Lincoln showed the noble spirit 
he was of, for again he congratulated the law- 
yer upon that fine speech of so long before. One 
can imagine that then Mr. Breckinridge was 
glad enough to listen to the praise of the man he 
had flouted as a boy. 

In Lincoln's canvass of 1834, or that of 1836, 
his constituents gave him two hundred dollars 
to meet the expenses of campaign. When the 
election was over, he handed back one hundred, 
ninety-nine dollars and twenty-five cents to the 
subscribers. "I did not need the money," he 
said. ' ' I made the canvass on my own horse ; my 
entertainment being at the houses of friends, 
cost me nothing; and my only outlay was sev- 
enty-five cents for a barrel of cider which some 
farm hands insisted I should treat them to." 
What candidate for the humblest office could be 
elected now at an outlay of seventy-five cents! 
But what candidate could be found with Lin- 
coln's power and popularity! 



104 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

There was much to learn socially in Vandalia 
where society was more polished than in New 
Salem ; and the young legislator did not fail to 
profit by his opportunities. And here in the 
Legislature he measured himself with the lead- 
ing men of the community, and held his own 
with them. 



XIV. 

The Lincoln-Stone Pkotest. 

The men who in 1836 assembled at Vandalia 
as members of the newly elected Legislature of 
Illinois were a set of picked men. There has 
been scarcely any other legislative assembly 
anywhere in which so many members later 
gained brilliant political reputation. What they 
did for the State of Illinois in the way of voting 
money for railroads, canals, and all other 
improvements which they could devise will be 
remembered as disastrous legislation which in 
the end crippled the resources of the State for 
years to come. But they were new at the work 
and their purposes were good. Lincoln was 
among these; he was one of the finance com- 
mittee busy with these schemes of internal 
improvement in the State and he did not per- 
ceive more than the others that they were bad 
legislation. In the performance of his duties 
large sums of money passed through his hands. 
105 



106 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

But not a dollar staid by the way. When in 
1837 he began to practice law he was a very 
poor man. 

It seemed best to the people of Illinois that 
the capital should be changed from Vandalia 
to a place more nearly in the middle of the 
State and having other advantages that Van- 
dalia had not. Springfield was the new capital 
fixed upon, and the task of bringing this to the 
Legislature and securing the vote was intrusted 
to Lincoln. He managed it successfully and to 
the great satisfaction of his constituents. He 
also had in charge some improvements on the 
Sangamon River in which the people of New 
Salem had not yet lost faith as to the possibility 
of its being made navigable. 

But in his record in the Legislature of Illinois 
is something of vastly greater importance than 
the foolish financial schemes in which he joined 
through ignorance of their folly; and of more 
value than his advocacy of the opening of the 
Sangamon River — now long since forgotten — or 
even than his work in changing the capital to 
Springfield, a permanent advantage. For it 
was here while a member of the Legislature 
that his real work began, the work for which it 
seems to us human beings as we look at it rever- 
ently, that God created him and led him through 
years of hardship and sorrow and struggle up 



THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. 107 

to a pinnacle of fame where still greater sorrow 
and struggle awaited him, but with it a wonder- 
ful power and a wonderful opportunity which 
his character and his life led him to seize and 
use for the blessing of the nation. For it was 
during the session of 1836-37 that he first pub- 
licly took that stand in regard to slavery which 
—although at first it looked just the other way— 
in reality, led him to the White House. 

We read books of travel and stories of adven- 
ture and novels to hear of men so strong and 
great that all disadvantages and trials they can 
overcome and all things that seem against them 
come in the end to stand for their good; they 
conquer everything; they conquer everybody; 
they reach the end they aim at ; everybody trusts 
them and admires and obeys them; their very 
presence brings strength and help; in every 
emergency they know the right thing and do it ; 
in every danger they are able to bring relief; 
they are the great success of genius and the 
highest in honor and fame. When we read of 
such heroes we often shut our books with a sigh 
and wish such persons actually lived. But no 
book of imagination ever painted a hero so 
remarkable and so successful as Abraham Lin- 
coln was, if by success we mean accomplishing 
the great object for which he labored and died ; 
reaching the highest place in one of the greatest 



108 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

of modern nations and being followed and hon- 
ored and loved by millions of people. It is true 
that in stories, and in real life also, men have 
risen from humble life to a throne. But no 
other man who has so risen has lifted with him 
four millions of slaves into freedmen. 

The first preparation for this work was Lin- 
coln's sight of the slaves in the cotton fields and 
in the market when he went to New Orleans, 
and many times much nearer him also. This 
sight of men and women bought and sold like 
cattle, and often of cruel treatment of them by 
overseers, Lincoln's own great love of freedom 
and his own remarkable practical sense which 
saw the unwisdom of slavery, led him to vote 
against a set of resolutions passed by the Illinois 
Legislature of 1837 in regard to slavery. 

For he believed then, as he said publicly after- 
ward, that for a man to govern himself was 
"self-government"; but to govern himself and 
govern another man also was more than self- 
government; it was despotism. He said also 
that no man was good enough to govern another 
man without that other man's consent. That 
referred to slavery. 

These resolutions of the Illinois Legislature 
were much more favorable to slavery than Lin- 
coln was and endeavored to soothe the South, 
irritated by discussions about slavery and oppo- 



THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. 109 

sition to it; for the South could no more keep 
people from talking about it than it could pre- 
vent the wind from blowing; and in trying to 
stop the talking, it talked a great deal itself and 
grew more and more angry. These resolutions 
were discussed for some time and, finally, passed 
unanimously in the Senate, and passed in the 
House of Representatives with none but Lin- 
coln and five other members voting against 
them. 

Many men would have thought that having 
voted against a measure which he disapproved 
of, he had done his duty ; the measure was popu- 
lar, still, he had voted against it because he 
thought it wrong. Why not leave the matter 
there when he was going before the people 
again for re-election? He was a young and am- 
bitious man with his way to make ; why should 
he say or do anything more about a subject that 
was unpopular? 

Because he was Abraham Lincoln, and it was 
not his way to leave a thing he believed wrong 
alone because it was unpopular and he might 
lose by having anything to do with it. The 
day before the end of the session he presented 
to the House, for he was a representative, the 
following protest which was read and ordered 
to be recorded: 



110 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

''Representative from the county of San- 
gamon. 

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic 
slavery having passed both branches of the Gen- 
eral Assembly at its present session, the under- 
signed hereby protest against the passage of the 
same. 

"They believe that the institution of slavery 
is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but. 
that the promulgation of abolition doctrines 
tends rather to increase than abate its evils. 

' ' They believe that the Congress of the Lmited 
States has no power under the Constitution to 
interfere with the institution of slavery in the 
different States. 

"They believe that the Congress of the United 
States has the power under the Constitution, to 
abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but 
that the power ought not to be exercised, unless 
at the request of the people of the District. 

"The difference between these opinions and 
those contained in the above resolutions is their 
reason for entering this protest. 

"(Signed) Dan Stone, 
"A. Lincoln, 
"Representatives from the County of Sanga- 

mo u." 

We, to-day, cannot understand why anything 
so very mildly put should be against anyone's 



THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST. Ill 

opinion. Yet there is one sentence: "They 
believe that the institution of slavery is founded 
on both injustice and bad policy," which shows 
.where Lincoln stood. There he planted him- 
self like a rock, and from this belief and the 
expression of this belief nothing could move 
him. He had said once to John Hanks in the 
New Orleans trip that if ever he had a chance 
to hit slavery, he would hit it hard. He began 
then and there. And in some form from that 
time until his voice through the thunder of can- 
non overthrew slavery, he was always hitting it 
hard ; and the more people defended it, the more 
the evils of it stood out, as is the way with all 
bad things. The South to-day is thankful to be 
rid of the burden of slavery and has grown 
stronger in its freedom. 

But in those times things were very different. 
After a terrible conflict which had waked up all 
the best people in the State, Illinois had voted 
to be a free instead of a slave State. But the 
victory won at the polls for freedom did not 
keep the people from admiring the slave-owners 
when they came over bringing their slaves to 
wait upon them. Then, Missouri was just being 
settled; and the people who passed through 
Illinois to go to the new State said what a pity 
it was that they could not remain in Illinois 
which was so attractive, but they preferred to 



112 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

go where they could take their slaves with them 
or could buy them as they liked. Years before 
Illinois had passed an act hiring slaves from 
Southern states because it said the people could 
not operate their mills without them ; yet all the 
while they were treating shamefully the free 
colored people who came into the State. 

Thus, in March, 1837, Abraham Lincoln in 
the Legislature which had just passed such a 
vote stood up all the height of his six feet and 
four inches and declared that "the institution of 
slavery is founded on both injustice and bad 
policy" — it would have been hard to find two 
more rotten pegs to stand anything upon ! 

But of the five men who voted with him, only 
one would sign this protest, and he was not 
going to stand for another election so he did 
not fear for his office. 

It was Lincoln's belief that God guided men's 
lives. And as Lincoln did the thing he knew to 
be right and left the result with God, he has 
made it plain to us that in such a life God does 
guide. 



XV. 

Settled in Springfield. 

The Sangamon County delegation to the Leg- 
islature was called "The Long Nine" because 
all the members were so tall; it was said that, 
put together, they would have been fifty-five 
feet ! Lincoln with his six feet four inches was 
the tallest of any. They were very good 
friends ; the Dan Stone who with Lincoln signed 
the Lincoln-Stone protest was one of them. 
After the session was over the nine were dined 
and made much of in Springfield because they 
had worked to have this city made the capital, 
and especially was Lincoln praised since he had 
led in this enterprise. 

In March, 1837, just as his term as represent- 
ative was over, Lincoln was admitted to the bar 
in Illinois. From the advice of his friends and 
by his own wish also he decided to begin the 
practice of law in Springfield and he made this 
city his home. He had no money. One of his 

113 



114 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

most intimate friends, Mr. Joshua Speed, tells 
the story of the young man coming into town on 
a borrowed horse with a few law books and a 
few pieces of clothing in a pair of saddle-bags, 
all he owned. He made inquiries as to the cost 
of a little furniture in a room and found it more 
than he could pay. Speed told him that he had 
a very large room and a large double bed and 
Lincoln would be welcome to share it with him. 
"Where is your room?" asked Lincoln. Speed 
told him it was upstairs. The other took his 
saddle-bags, went upstairs and set them down 
on the floor, then came down in smiles and cried : 
"Well, Speed, I'm moved!" 

To a person familiar with other cities Spring- 
field would have seemed uncouth enough. But 
it had never been really a pioneer town. 
A number of w T ell-to-do Kentucky families had 
come there, besides settlers of a more polished 
type than usual with the genuine Western pio- 
neer in those days. Lincoln wrote about it as 
a place where there was "a good deal of flour- 
ishing about in carriages." We find a reference 
to the goods advertised in the newspaper of 
Springfield at that time showing how much 
attention was paid to dress. "Cloths, cassi- 
meres, silk, satin, velvet, Marseilles vestings, 
fine calf boots, seal and morocco pumps, for 
gentlemen; and for ladies, silks, bareges, 



SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 115 

crepe lisse, lace veils, thread lace, lace hand- 
kerchiefs, fine prunella shoes, &c." A few 
years before this there had been a gradual 
change in the dress of the people of Illinois. 
Leather and linsey woolsey, hunting knife 
and tomahawk had disappeared from men's 
dress; and these wore leather boots and 
shoes instead of moccasins; they did not tie 
leather breeches around their ankles, but wore 
pantaloons in place of them. Women no longer 
went barefoot, and instead of homespun frocks 
wore gowns of calico and, sometimes, silk ones ; 
they did not any more tie up their heads in 
hideous red cotton turbans, but put on pretty 
bonnets. The old pioneers shook their heads 
and declared that bad things would come to a 
country where the young people did not believe 
in things that were "good enough for their 
fathers." But the new clothes looked much 
better than the old garments that the pioneers 
wore, because they could not get any better, and 
not because they loved them. 

Springfield was between the woods on the 
north and the prairie lands on the south. The 
soil was so rich that the mud in the streets was 
perfectly black and in the spring there seemed to 
be no bottom to it. There were no pavements or 
sidewalks ; large chunks of wood were laid down 
to make crossings, and these were not likely to be 



116 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

either very even or very steady. The houses 
were chiefly built of wood and built in blocks. 
A large square had been left in the middle of 
the town because people thought that they would 
want this when Springfield grew to be a great 
city, and when Lincoln came to Springfield they 
were clearing the ground there for the new 
State House. The offices of the county court 
were in one of the largest houses looking on this 
square, and the other rooms in the building were 
let for lawyers' offices. Major Stuart, whom 
Lincoln had known in the Black Hawk war and 
who had lent the young man law books, now 
offered Lincoln a partnership with him; and 
one of the offices in that building was that of 
" Stuart and Lincoln." The furniture of this 
room was a small lounge or bed, a chair with a 
buffalo robe in it in which Lincoln used to sit 
and study, a hard, wooden bench, a rough book- 
case and a table that also served as a desk. 

At this time Judge Logan, afterward Lin- 
coln's law partner, was judge of the circuit court 
and Stephen A. Douglas with whom the future 
President had in coming years such debates that 
the whole nation echoed to his trenchant argu- 
ments against the slave power and marveled at 
his clear exposition of its treacheries — Douglas 
was then prosecuting attorney. 

The method of practicing law in those days 



SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 117 

and in that new country was entirely different 
from the present. If a lawyer in Illinois had 
staid in his office and waited for clients, he might 
have waited there forever. But many of the 
lawyers then were half politicians. In the 
stores, in the streets, in the public halls, every- 
where, they discussed politics, they knew what 
was going on, they found their clients. There 
were not the difficult questions of law to be 
decided in those days that we have now; there 
were no corporation lawyers, for there were no 
great corporations such as we have now; and 
many questions of interstate commerce and rail- 
roading and other matters, certainly in their 
present shape, were not known. Lawyers de- 
pended a great deal upon their influence with a 
jury, more than upon what they really knew of 
law. Major Stuart, Lincoln's first partner, was 
a candidate for Congress in 1838, and was 
elected over the head of Stephen A. Douglas. 
So that the Major could set Lincoln no example 
of industry in law. 

Lincoln himself was still a politician ; he was 
elected to the State Legislature in 1838, and 
again in 1840 ; so that from 1834 to 1842 he was 
a representative. Speed's store was a great 
gathering place for political and all other de- 
bates, and there Lincoln became well known for 
his brightness and his good stories. 



118 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

No lawyer in the country ever had a greater 
influence over a jury than Lincoln had. He had 
a remarkable power of putting a case so clearly 
that nobody could misunderstand it. But this 
was not all his power; a part of this came from 
the fact that here as everywhere he was "honest 
Abe," he would not take a case that he did not 
believe in, and when he found that his client had 
deceived him and was really guilty of what he 
was accused of, Lincoln has been known to turn 
the case over to his partner, saying he himself 
was helpless to plead in the case. And when his 
partner undertook a case where the client was 
guilty, and brought him off, Lincoln would not 
touch a dollar of his share of the fee. Once 
when a sheep-grower had employed him, it came 
out in evidence that although he had delivered 
to the other man the number of animals agreed 
upon, yet some of them were so young that they 
were under the average value. When Mr. Lin- 
coln understood this, he found out how many of 
these cheaper sheep had been delivered con- 
trary to the agreement, and told the jury that 
they must give a verdict against his client and he 
only asked them to be careful to give just the 
right amount. He must always be on the side 
of justice, no matter whether himself or his 
clients suffered for it. 

The lawyers in Springfield were not willing to 



SETTLED IN SPRINGFIELD. 119 

undertake the defence of any person who had 
been engaged in helping off fugitive slaves ; and 
they were especially unwilling when they were 
running, or about to run for office. A man went 
to Edward D. Baker asking him to undertake 
his case. But Baker would not do it; he said as 
a political man he could not afford to do this. 
The man went to an anti-slavery friend for 
advice. This friend told him to go to Lincoln. 
''He's not afraid of an unpopular case," he said. 
"When I go for a lawyer to defend an arrested 
fugitive slave, other lawyers will refuse me, but 
if Mr. Lincoln is at home, he will always take 
my case. ' ' 

This testimony concerning the young lawyer 
proves that to Abraham Lincoln the Lincoln- 
Stone protest was no mere instrument of empty 
words, but the belief on which his life work was 
based. For no politicians, for no place, for no 
power would he move from his principles. He 
was not born a seeker of popularity; he was 
born a leader of the nation in its terrible 
struggle. 



XVI. 

Abraham Lincoln Marries. 

Dr. Holland says of Abraham Lincoln when 
he was in Mr. OfTutt's store: "He was judge, 
arbitrator, referee, umpire, authority, in all dis- 
putes, games and matches of man-flesh and 
horse-flesh ; a pacificator in all quarrels ; every- 
body 's friend; the best-natured, the most sen- 
sible, the best-informed, the most modest and 
unassuming, the kindliest, gentlest, roughest, 
strongest, best young fellow in all New Salem 
and the region round about. ' ' 

From the days when he was a big school-boy 
and he and little Kate Roby, like school-boy and 
school-girl, used to sit on the banks of the San- 
gamon and dangle their feet over the water while 
they talked and laughed together, Lincoln knew 
very few women except his noble step-mother. 
It was probably from her and from his own 
mother whom he always remembered with great 
affection that he gained the great reverence for 
women which he always had. It came in part, 
120 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 121 

too, from his own beautiful nature that believed 
in things good and true. 

But while he was in New Salem he became 
acquainted with Anne Rutledge, the daughter 
of Mr. Rutledge who owned the mill and was one 
of the founders and principal men of New Salem. 
He liked young Lincoln and made him welcome. 
At one time he kept the tavern where Lincoln 
came to board in 1833. Anne was a beautiful 
girl. One description of her says that she had 
auburn hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion, 
and was slender and fragile. She had a bright 
mind and a gentle and sympathetic heart. Lin- 
coln came to love her so much that when she 
died it seemed as if he, too, would die or lose 
his mind through grief. It is said of him that 
before this time he was thoroughly gay and 
light-hearted; but afterward, although he often 
seemed to his companions to be enjoying life 
much, yet he had moods of deep melancholy. 

But the duties and demands of life pressed 
upon him ; and he took them up again. He did 
his work in the Legislature, his studying and his 
practice, and always that unconscious prepara- 
tion for his great work. For he came to under- 
stand better and better the public questions of 
that day, and especially that great question of 
slavery which was fast becoming so immense 
that everything else was small beside it. 



122 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

When he went to live in Spring-field, he was 
often at the house of one of his intimate friends, 
Mr. Ninian Edwards. There he met constantly 
Mrs. Edwards' sister, Miss Mary Todd of Ken- 
tucky. His friends and hers told him that he 
had better marry Miss Todd ; and at one time he 
was engaged to her. Then he began to question 
whether he loved her enough to marry her ; for 
no one could be to him like Anne Rutledge, and 
he must give Miss Todd a real affection, for he 
had too much reverence for her not to do this. 
The young man was full of honor and noble 
feeling; he was as eager to do right here as in 
any public question that could come to him — 
even more eager. He went into Kentucky for a 
time and staid with his friend, Mr. Speed, and 
rested from all work — and, no doubt, he needed 
the rest — then he returned to Springfield. He 
knew now what he ought to do. Miss Todd 
loved him. In November, 1842, they were 
married. 

There is an amusing story of a duel that Lin- 
coln was forced to fight the summer before his 
marriage. It happened in this way. Miss Todd 
was a very bright young woman and could 
write articles making fun of persons and arous- 
ing their anger. There was some public ques- 
tion in which she was interested and she and 
another young woman, a friend of hers, wrote 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 123 

some witty and cutting articles in the paper 
about a certain Mr. Shields, afterwards General 
Shields. He resented them and demanded from 
the paper the name of the author. The editor 
would not give the name of the ladies and asked 
Lincoln what he should do. Lincoln told him : 
''Give my name." It has been suggested that 
he did really give Miss Todd and her friends 
some "points" for the articles. So, Shields 
challenged Lincoln; and Lincoln could not get 
out of it without disgrace. But he did not want 
to hurt Shields and he had no wish to be killed 
himself; so, as he had the choice of weapons, 
being the person challenged, he chose "cavalry 
broadswords of the largest size"; and the two 
were "to stand on each side of a board placed on 
the ground, each to fight within limit of six feet 
on his own side of the board." Lincoln was 
ashamed of the whole thing; Shields was de- 
lighted with it. But just at the last minute 
friends reconciled the two. 

When Lincoln and Miss Todd were married 
they went at first to board at the Globe Tavern 
in Springfield where they paid what was then 
a good price— four dollars a week. Lincoln was 
out of debt at last ; but he was still poor and he 
never made money as so many men with his 
opportunities would have done. 

After a time, however, he had his own house 



124 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

in Springfield. He spent the money his practice 
gave him in educating his children and in living 
plainly, yet liberally. People who knew him 
speak of "the old-fashioned hospitality of 
Springfield," and Mrs. Lincoln's dinners and 
evening parties in her ' ' modest and simple home 
where everything was so orderly and refined." 
Both she and Mr. Lincoln were full of the cordial 
Western manner which put the guests at ease 
at once. They had many rare Kentucky dishes 
on their table, and venison, and other game so 
abundant then. For from this time Mr. Lin- 
coln could afford to live comfortably; hence- 
forth his income was sufficient for his wants. 
His personal wants were always few; he never 
drank, he never smoked, he lived a simple, beau- 
tiful life. 

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln had four children, all 
sons. These were Robert Todd, Edwards, 
William and Thomas. Edwards died when a 
baby, and William died in the White House. 
Thomas used to be called "Tad," because while 
he was a wee baby, before he had been named, 
his father called him, "Tadpole." The name 
clung and we shall always remember him as 
"Tad" in the stories that are told of him while 
a child in the White House. 

It is said of Lincoln that he was a devoted 
father, was never impatient with his children's 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN MARRIES. 125 

restlessness or perversity, but delighted in being 
with them and took them to his heart with an 
affection so deep as to make him overlook their 
faults. The worst he could bring himself to 
say to a naughty child was: "You break my 
heart when you act like this." And his tender- 
ness and the pain in his face and his tones were 
enough to make the boy repent. People in 
Springfield used to see him almost any summer 
morning walking back and forth before his house 
drawing one of his children in a child's gig, 
and so deep in the study of some law or some 
political question that he would often pass his 
friends without seeing them. 



XVII. 
In Congress. 

In 1840 Lincoln was nominated for Presiden- 
tial Elector to vote for General Harrison for 
President, and at once made a spirited and suc- 
cessful canvass for him, traveling over a large 
part. of the State. There were many brilliant 
speakers ; but one of Lincoln's orations was con- 
sidered the best of the whole and it was after- 
ward printed and circulated as a campaign docu- 
ment. It was a bright, witty speech, full of 
hard hits at the other side, and was very 
popular. 

It was not the last time that Lincoln was made 
Presidential Elector. For in every presidential 
campaign the Whigs used to send him out to 
talk to the people in their own dialect, and after 
their own way of looking at things, in favor of 
the party candidate. 

But when in 1844 Henry Clay was nominated 
by the Whigs for President, Lincoln's canvass 

126 



IN CONGRESS. 127 

for him was made with a zeal he had not known 
before. For he had the greatest admiration 
for Clay and believed in him with all his heart. 
And when Clay was defeated, it seemed to Lin- 
coln a great calamity. Some time afterward he 
went to visit the great statesman at his home. 
But here he was disappointed in him; for he 
found Mr. Clay lofty and condescending, as if 
no one could be of so great consequence as he 
himself was; and the speech which the young 
man heard him deliver was not eloquent at all. 

After Mr. Lincoln had left the Illinois Legis- 
lature, he was elected Representative, and took 
his seat in the Thirtieth Congress at Washing- 
ton, December 6, 1847. There were many emi- 
nent men in that Congress, but none so great as 
Lincoln afterward became. He had been elected 
by the largest majority given in his district; 
for the people had the greatest confidence in his 
integrity and faithfulness. He had had experi- 
ence in the State Legislature, so that he was at 
home in methods and debates ; and he was well 
acquainted with the questions of the day and 
knew how the parties stood toward one another, 
and the desires and aims of each. He took his 
place quietly, and in this first session he did 
nothing especially striking, although he intro- 
duced a set of resolutions calling upon Presi- 
dent Polk to give a statement of facts concern- 



128 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ing the Mexican war, so that Congress and the 
country would know what to believe. The reso- 
lutions were laid over, and Mr. Lincoln did not 
call for them again; but in January he made 
a speech in the House founded upon these. In 
this he called upon President Polk to explain 
the causes and the origin of the war with Mex- 
ico; and when it would end? 

We had to get out of the war somehow. So 
some of the best soldiers and most famous 
generals and other officers in the Mexican war 
were Whigs. But they went to help out the 
country in time of need and not because they 
sustained President Polk and his evil policy. 
For the House of Representatives voted in the 
January of 1848 that it was "a war unneces- 
sarily and unconstitutionally made by the Presi- 
dent of the United States." 

Lincoln and his famous political opponent, 
Stephen A. Douglas, were in Congress at the 
same time. Lincoln was the tallest man in the 
House arid Douglas the shortest man in the 
Senate; he was called "the little giant," because 
he was so short of stature and so strong in 
mind. But there was a greater difference 
between him and Lincoln than that of height or 
ability, the difference which came out after this 
time between honor and dishonor in character; 
Douglas wanted power, and he could be bought 



IN CONGRESS. 129 

to gain it; Lincoln liked power also, as any man 
does who is capable of wielding it, but truth was 
always more to him than his own success, or any 
man's; it was not in him to say or do what he 
did not believe for any place or any power. He 
was already beginning to distrust Douglas. But 
the great battles between the two had not then 
been thought of. 

Congress adjourned in August, 1848 ; and then 
Lincoln began to electioneer for General Zach- 
ary Taylor, our next President. He so inter- 
ested the people in his own district that they 
gave nearly as large a vote as they had done 
for Lincoln himself. Then he went to New 
England and there he made some telling cam- 
paign speeches. He had a great power of seeing 
what things really meant, no matter how they 
had been covered up with false statements ; and 
he could present the truth in such a way that 
people could not help seeing it and remember- 
ing it. 

When Congress met again the following 
December there was a great change in feeling 
in it. The election was over; the Whigs had 
been successful in electing their President. The 
House was ready to try to bring in New Mexico 
and California as free Territories. But the 
Senate would not agree, and the matter was 
left for a time. 



130 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Lincoln was as desirous as any one to have 
the new Territories free; he always voted 
against slavery. But, much as he hated it, he 
did not believe that we had a right to touch it 
in the slave States; because, although it was 
wrong, the law upheld it; and he wanted to 
have the time come when this law would be 
changed; and, meanwhile, not to let slavery 
encroach any further into free ground. 

It seemed to him, however, as it did to many 
others, that to have slaves bought and sold in 
our own capital city of Washington owned by 
the United States, was a disgrace to our country. 
He wanted Congress with the consent of the 
people of the District of Columbia to free their 
slaves and pay the masters for them; and he 
tried to have this thing done. A good many 
approved of the measure. 

But the people of Washington opposed it very 
strongly. So, the mayor of Washington who 
had at first given his consent to freeing the 
slaves was obliged to withdraw it — or he thought 
he was — and the measure fell through. 

That bill freeing the slaves in the District of 
Columbia waited fifteen years. Then, during 
the civil war when Mr. Lincoln was President, 
Congress passed it and he signed it. 

Lincoln's term in Congress ended on the 
fourth of March, 1849 ; and he did not try to be 



IN CONGRESS. 131 

re-elected. He said that there were many Whigs 
who could do as much as he "to bring the dis- 
trict right side up." 

President Taylor wanted to make him gov- 
ernor of Oregon. But Mrs. Lincoln was not 
willing to go to a country so far away and 
unsettled as Oregon was at that time ; it seemed 
to her a wilderness; and Lincoln decided not 
to go. 

We have reason to be thankful he did not. 
For he was needed in the forefront of the com- 
ing battle of arguments and opinions ; and, later, 
in that terrible war between the South and the 
North in which he was to have so great a work 
to do. 

But before all this there came to him a little 
breathing space. 

For he went back to Springfield and took up 
again his practice of law. 



XVIII. 

A Real Student. 

In 1841 Lincoln had dissolved partnership 
with Major Stuart who was in Congress, and 
was associated with a much more thorough and 
careful lawyer, Judge Logan. From this time 
until political duties took all his care and 
thoughts, Lincoln devoted himself more ear- 
nestly to his profession. He said of himself: 
"From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, I practiced 
law more assiduously than ever before." 

He studied his cases with great care and 
patience and had a wonderful power with juries. 
When he returned from Congress he found that 
some changes had taken place in the methods of 
practice from old ways, there was more knowl- 
edge of law required, and more care in presen- 
tation of a case. It had seemed to him while 
he was in Congress that he lacked a certain 
power of close and sustained reasoning. So, 
when he came home he set himself to study such 

132 



A REAL STUDENT. 133 

works on logic and mathematics as he thought 
would be useful to him; he soon learned by 
heart six books of Euclid and always remem- 
bered the principles they contained. 

Judge David Davis, who was for many years 
presiding judge of the circuit when Lincoln was 
on this circuit and who knew him well, said of 
him: "In all the elements that constitute the 
great lawyer he had few equals. He seized the 
strong points of a case and presented them with 
clearness and great compactness. The frame- 
work of his mental and moral being was hon- 
esty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended 
by him. ' ' Davis said that Lincoln could not ex- 
plain away the bad points of a case, and spoke of 
how little power Lincoln had if he did not believe 
in his cause ; how he never meant to take a case 
where his client was in the wrong, but sometimes 
was at first deceived himself— and how strong 
he was when he knew he was right ; how he hated 
wrong and oppression and made the man who 
had been defrauding writhe under his terrible 
rebukes. He said that Lincoln, even when he 
won, never took from a client more than he 
thought his services were worth or the man 
could afford to pay; and that his charges were 
always small because the people among whom 
he practiced were not rich. When he was elected 
President it is probable that there was not a 



134 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

lawyer in the circuit who had been at the bar as 
long who had not more money than Abraham 
Lincoln; it was not the business of his life to 
make a fortune. 

Mr. Herndon who was afterward his law part- 
ner tells how a man came to Lincoln one day 
and wanted him to take an objectionable case. 
Lincoln said to him after he had heard him 
through: "Yes, there is no reasonable doubt 
but that I can gain your case for you. I can 
set a whole neighborhood at loggerheads ; I can 
distress a widowed mother and her six father- 
less children, and thereby get for you six hun- 
dred dollars which rightfully belongs, it appears 
to me, as much to them as it does to you. 
I shall not take your case, but I will give a little 
advice for nothing. You seem a sprightly, ener- 
getic man. I would advise you to try your hand 
at making six hundred dollars in some other 
way. ' ' 

Sometimes after he had undertaken a criminal 
case, it would suddenly come to him that his 
client was guilty. At one such time he turned 
to his associate and said: "Swett, the man is 
guilty ; you defend him ; I can 't. ' ' And he gave 
up his share of a large fee. At another time in 
defending a man accused of larceny, he said to 
the lawyer who was with him : "Tf you can say 
anything for the man, do it; I can't. If I 



A REAL STUDENT. 135 

attempt it, the jury will see I think he is guilty, 
and convict hiin." At another time he found 
that his client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln 
got up in great disgust and went off to his hotel. 
The judge sent for him. He would not go into 
court. "Tell the judge," he said, "my hands 
are dirty ; I came over here to wash them." 

Lincoln had been in practice only a short 
time when he was engaged on one side or the 
other of all the most important cases on the 
circuit. At the beginning of his work he was 
only "a case lawyer," knowing how to carry the 
jury but not well enough educated to be an 
authority. But toward the latter part of his 
life he had so trained his powers of generaliza- 
tion and deduction and studied the principles of 
law that the best lawyers held him their equal. 

When he returned from Congress an eminent 
lawyer in Chicago wanted him to become his 
partner in that city. But Mr. Lincoln said that 
practice in a large city would be injurious to his 
health. 

He enjoyed the life on circuit although there 
were many hardships. And if any one among 
the lawyers had to be imposed upon by a room 
not so good or crowded with others, it was 
always Lincoln. He was always welcomed 
wherever he went. But it has been said of him 
that at hotels he was never put beside the land- 



136 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

lord to have the choicest bits at table nor did he 
have the best seats in coaches or any such atten- 
tions pressed upon him. But by reason of his 
wit and his stories he was always the centre of 
an admiring crowd of friends and acquaintances. 

Mr. Herndon tells how he often went on cir- 
cuit with him. At such times in country taverns 
the two usually occupied the same bed. In most 
instances the beds were too short for Lincoln 
whose feet would hang over the footboard. He 
would put a candle on a chair at the head of the 
bed and read and study for hours. It was in 
this way he studied Euclid, as well as other 
works. When he once fixed his mind on any 
subject, nothing could disturb him, he had such 
power of concentration. To a young man who 
wrote asking how he could best gain a thorough 
knowledge of law, Lincoln answered that it was 
a very simple thing, but very tedious and toil- 
some; he must get books and read and study 
carefully. "Begin with 'Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries,' and after reading carefully through, 
say twice, take up 'Chitty's Pleadings,' 'Green- 
leaf's Evidence' and 'Story's Equity' in suc- 
cession. Work, work, work is the main thing." 

Mr. Lincoln enjoyed a joke even when it was 
against himself; and he was sometimes able to 
turn it back upon the perpetrators. One day in 
the spring of 1849 two travelers were waiting to 



A REAL STUDENT. 137 

take the stage from Terre Haute to Indian- 
apolis. When it arrived it had only one pas- 
senger, a long, lank man who was sound asleep 
on the back seat, his head appearing at one side 
of the coach and his feet on the other. One of 
the travelers slapped him on the shoulder and 
asked him if he had chartered the stage for the 
day? "Certainly not," returned the man; and 
he at once got up and took the front seat giving 
up the place of honor and comfort to the 
strangers. "He was a queer-looking fellow," 
wrote one of the travelers, "dressed in a well- 
worn and ill-fitting suit of bombazine, without 
vest or cravat, and a twenty-five cent palm hat 
on the back of his head. His very prominent 
features in repose seemed dull and expression- 
less. Regarding him as a good subject for merri- 
ment, we perpetrated several jokes. He took 
them all with the utmost innocence and good- 
nature, and joined in the laugh although at his 
own expense. At noon we stopped at a way- 
side hostelry for dinner. We invited him to 
eat with us, and he approached the table as if 
he considered it a great honor." 

So the story goes on, telling how, late in the 
evening, the stage reached Indianapolis. The 
travelers went to a hotel and lost sight of the 
stranger. Later, coming from their rooms they 
saw the "long, gloomy fellow-traveler in the 



138 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

center of an admiring group of lawyers who 
seemed to be amused and interested in a story 
he was telling." The travelers asked the land- 
lord who the tall man was! "Abraham Lin- 
coln of Illinois, a member of Congress," re- 
turned the landlord. The travelers slunk out of 
the hotel by the back door and went to another 
place. Yet when Mr. Lincoln was President, 
he appointed one of these men minister to Chili. 

With all his work Lincoln found time to 
advocate the temperance cause in which he was 
deeply interested. He never drank himself, as 
has been said before ; but he had opportunity to 
see the misery that drink caused and to hate it. 
Neither did he smoke, or chew. What strength 
and life he had went to the service of others, not 
to self-indulgence of any kind. 

His partner, Mr. Herndon, says that occasion- 
ally he himself used to get a little grandiloquent 
in his language ; and one day Lincoln warned 
him. "Billy, don't shoot too high," he* said, 
"aim lower and the common people will under- 
stand you. They are the ones you want to reach 
—at least they are the ones you ought to reach. 
The educated and refined people will understand 
you anyway. If you aim too high your ideas 
will go over the heads of the masses, and only 
hit those who need no hitting." 



XIX. 

How Lincoln Practiced Law. 

Mrs. Lincoln was very ambitious and had 
great faith in her husband's future. She was 
much delighted when a few years after their 
marriage he was elected to Congress. She went 
with him to Washington and was there during 
one session of Congress. Herndon says that if 
Lincoln seemed homely to other people, he was 
''the embodiment of noble manhood" to her. 
She was one day at the law office while her hus- 
band was absent and when she and Mr. Herndon 
were talking of Douglas, she said: "Mr. Lin- 
coln may not be as handsome a figure, but people 
are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large 
as his arms are long." 

It is a question, however, whether she ever 
heard one instance of her husband's large-heart- 
edness toward the lower animals also. Dr. Hol- 
land tells how one day when Lincoln was riding 
the circuit he went by a deep slough where to his 

139 



140 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

great distress he saw a pig struggling, but so 
faintly that it was plain the poor creature was 
nearly exhausted and had no chance of getting 
out of the mire into which it was constantly 
sinking deeper. Mr. Lincoln looked at the pig 
and the mud in which it was wallowing and at 
his own new clothes which he did not want to 
ruin. The clothes won the day and he rode on 
leaving the poor pig to its sad fate. He did not 
ride far, however, he could not stand it. He 
went back, fastened his horse, took some old 
rails lying about and built a passage to the 
bottom of the hole. Then he walked down on 
these, seized the pig and dragged it to firm 
ground ; but not without great injury to his new 
clothes. Washing his hands in the nearest 
brook, he went on his way, discussing with him- 
self what had made him do this thing. At first 
he imagined it was "pure benevolence," but at 
last he decided that it was just selfishness, since 
he went to the pig's relief, as he put it to a 
friend, "to take a pain out of his own mind." 

Lincoln's presentation of his first case has no 
parallel in law records. He rose and said to 
the bench : ' ' This is the first case I have ever 
had in this court, and I have therefore examined 
il with great care. As the Court will perceive 
by looking at the abstract of the record, the only 
question in this case is one of authority. 1 have 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 141 

not been able to find any authority sustaining 
my side of the case, but I have found several 
cases directly in point on the other side. I will 
now give these cases and then submit the case." 

A young, poor lawyer needing practice, and 
his first case! And he told the truth against 
himself as freely as if it had been in his favor. 
Was it any wonder that he had weight with 
juries when they were absolutely sure that he 
believed exactly what he said? For, clear, witty, 
interesting to fascination as he certainly was, 
the foundation of his influence was that they 
believed him. There were cases brought to him 
that he would have nothing to do with; no fee 
that could be offered would make him try to win 
an injustice because it was legal or technical. 
He was not deeply learned in rules of evidence or 
practice as in text-books, and did not care for 
them. His sense of justice was keen ; he strug- 
gled for justice, throwing aside forms, methods 
and rules, until at last justice appeared "pure 
as a ray of light flashing through a fog bank." 
He was not a wide reader, but when he had a 
matter to investigate he went to the root of it, 
he was thorough and unwearied in his search; 
and he found what he searched for, and put it 
before others in such a form that they could not 
help seeing it. 

One storv of him is that he went one day to a 



142 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

lawyer in another town, saying: "I see you've 
been suing some of rny clients, and I've come 
down to see about it." The other lawyer 
explained the case and showed the proofs. Lin- 
coln said that he would be equally frank; that 
the other's client was entitled to a decree and he 
should represent it thus to the court ; and that it 
was against his principles to contest a clear 
matter of right. So the other's client received 
a deed for a farm which, if anybody but Mr. 
Lincoln had been on the opposite side, would 
have been all used up in law-suits, with, prob- 
ably, the same decision at last. 

A widow, Lincoln's client, owned some valu- 
able land. Lincoln was not satisfied as to the 
description of a part of it in the title-deed; so 
he surveyed it himself, and found that the man 
who had sold it to the person from whom she 
had inherited it had conveyed more land than 
he had been paid for; and that she ought to 
make it right with his heirs. She objected very 
strongly; but when Lincoln and his partner 
told her that they would drop the case unless 
she did it, she paid the amount. 

Mr. Herndon who from 1845 was the law part- 
ner of Lincoln until his death has many incidents 
of him. He tells how at one time in Lincoln's 
absence and without his knowledge he made a 
fictitious plea from something he had gathered 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 143 

the opposing counsel believed, so that they could 
not question it, but were much perplexed about 
it. Before things had gone further Lincoln 
came into court. He looked carefully over the 
papers in the case and when he saw Herndon's 
ingenious falsehood, he asked : "Is this seventh 
plea a good one?" The other said it was. 
"But is it founded on fact?" persisted Lincoln. 
Then Herndon explained, and said that they 
were justified because their client must have 
time, or be ruined. But Lincoln shook his head. 
' ' Hadn 't we better withdraw that plea ! " he said. 
"You know it's a sham, and a sham is very often 
but another name for a lie. Don't let it go on 
record. The cursed thing may come staring us 
in the face long after this suit has been for- 
gotten. ' ' The plea was withdrawn ; it had to be. 
And, oddly enough, not by their act, however, 
the case was continued and the client saved. 

Mr. Lincoln disliked the mechanical work of 
the office ; he wrote fewer papers than most men 
at the bar; his young partner had this work at 
first, and afterward their law students. To one 
of these young men Lincoln gave the caution not 
to be as enthusiastic as two other students they 
had had. He pointed to a large inkstain on 
the wall. "One of these young men got so 
enthusiastic in his pursuit of legal lore," he said, 



144 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

"that he fired an inkstand at the other's head, 
and that is the mark he made." 

Lincoln's favorite position when he was work- 
ing over a knotty case was to stretch both legs 
at full length upon a chair and have his books 
in his lap and on a table at hand. Then, no 
matter how busy he was, if anybody came in he 
had time to tell some joke or droll story. In- 
deed, he had the same habit then which he found 
so useful when President. A man would come 
to him to find out something that Lincoln did 
not want to have him find out and yet did not 
want to refuse him. Lincoln would do the chief 
of the talking, skirting round the special point 
but never touching it, and adding so many 
stories and jokes to his answers, that the man 
would go away in high good humor. Afterward 
he would remember that he had not found out 
anything after all. 

Lincoln's letters were never formal and tech- 
nical. He once wrote to a lawyer in another 
town apologizing for delay in not answering a 
letter sooner: "First, I have been very busy 
in the United States Court; second, when I 
received the letter I put it in my old hat, and 
buying a new one the next day the old one was 
set aside and so the letter was lost sight of for a 
time." Perhaps he learned the habit of carry- 
ing things in his hat when he used to carry the 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 145 

post-office there in New Salem. He had a bun- 
dle of papers on the top of his desk into which 
he slipped things he wanted to keep and refer 
to later. Years after his death Mr. Herndon, 
removing the furniture from the office took down 
this bundle of papers and blew the dust from 
the top. Under the string tying the bundle was 
a little slip of paper in Lincoln's handwriting. 
It read: "When you can't find it anywhere 
else, look in this." 

When Lincoln grew more prominent and the 
law business more profitable, there were some 
who would have been glad to supplant Mr. Hern- 
don in the partnership. One of these told Mr. 
Lincoln that Herndon was in a way weakening 
the influence of the firm. "I know my own 
business, I reckon, ' ' retorted Lincoln. ' ' I know 
Billy Herndon better than anybody, and even if 
what you say of him is true, I intend to stick 
by him. ' ' 

Lincoln needed two things for managing a case 
successfully. One was time; and the other, as 
has been already said, confidence in the justice 
of his cause. He used to say if he could free the 
case from technicalities and get it properly 
swung to the jury he would win. His partner 
was sometimes restless at Lincoln's slow move- 
ments and speeches in court, and would tell him 
to speak with more "vim," to talk faster and 



146 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

keep the jury awake. One day Lincoln answered 
him by an illustration. "Give me your pen- 
knife with its short blade," he said, "and hand 
me that old jack-knife lying on the table." 
Opening the pen-knife, he said: "You see 
this blade at the point travels rapidly, but only 
through a small portion of space till it stops; 
while the long blade of the jack-knife moves no 
faster but through a much greater space than 
the small one." This he likened to his own 
mind. "I may not emit ideas as rapidly as 
others, because I am compelled by nature to 
speak slowly," he said. "But when I do throw 
off a thought, it seems to me, though it comes 
with some effort, it has force enough to cut its 
own way and travel a greater distance." That 
was said only when the two were alone together, 
as explanation. 

Lincoln with his partner won a case for the 
Illinois Central Railroad. Lincoln went to Chi- 
cago and presented his bill asking two thousand 
dollars over the retainer fee of two hundred and 
fifty. The official in charge, supposed to have 
been the superintendent, George B. McClellan, 
afterward the general who never won his battles, 
looked at the bill in great surprise. "Why, 
sir," he exclaimed, "this is as much as Daniel 
Webster himself would have charged. We can- 
not allow such a claim." Mr. Lincoln took the 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 147 

bill and went home. On the way he stopped at 
Bloomington and met a number of attorneys 
who told him he had asked too little for his 
valuable services, and persuaded him to make 
his bill five thousand dollars and bring suit. The 
railroad paid promptly. "Well, Billy," said 
Mr. Lincoln to his partner, ''here's our fee; sit 
down and let me divide." And he counted out 
the half and handed it over as if it had been a 
few cents. If he came into the office with a fee 
and Herndon was out, he would wrap up his 
share in a piece of paper and put it into the 
latter 's drawer, making it: "Case of Roe vs. 
Doe— Herndon 's half." 

A lawyer friend of Lincoln's gives an account 
of the manner of Lincoln in Court. In places 
where most lawyers would object he would 
"reckon" it would be fair to let in this thing or 
that; and sometimes when the opponent could 
not quite prove a thing and Lincoln knew it was 
the truth, he "reckoned" it would be fair to 
admit such and such evidence. When he did 
object and the court answered his objection, he 
would "reckon" he must be wrong. "Now, 
about the time he had practiced this three- 
fourths through the case," said this colleague 
writing of Lincoln, "if his adversary didn't 
understand him, he would wake up in a few 
minutes, learning that he had feared the Greeks 



148 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

too late, and find himself beaten. Lincoln was 
as wise as a serpent in the trial of a cause," 
says this friend, "but I have had too many- 
scares from his blows to certify that he was 
harmless as a dove. "When the whole thing 
was unraveled, the adversary would begin to 
see that what he (Lincoln) was so blandly 
giving away was simply what he couldn't get 
and keep. Any man who took Lincoln for a 
simple-minded man would very soon wake up 
with his back in a ditch." 

What Lincoln's opponents feared most in 
his management of a case before a jury was 
the way in which he would brush aside all con- 
ventional rules and come out with some strange 
and clever performance which would carry the 
jury; his "dramatic strokes" or his bringing 
in some sudden interruption not provided for, 
were always dreaded. He was once in a case 
where Judge Logan was on the other side. 
The judge was always very grave and precise. 
Lincoln looked at him, but said nothing until 
he came to address the jury; then he said: 
"Gentlemen, you must be careful and not per- 
mit yourselves to be overcome by the eloquence 
of the counsel for the defence. Judge Logan, I 
know, is an effective lawyer. I have met him 
too often to doubt that. But shrewd and care- 
ful though he be, still he is sometimes wrong. 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 149 

Since this trial has begun I have discovered 
that, with all his caution and fastidiousness, 
he hasn't knowledge enough to put his shirt on 
right." Logan was scarlet; but Lincoln was 
right; the judge in putting on a new shirt had 
by mistake drawn it over his head with the 
pleated bosom behind. The laugh that fol- 
lowed this speech destroyed the effect of Lo- 
gan's eloquent plea to the jury; and that was 
what Lincoln intended. 

One of his most famous cases was that of 
a son of the Jack Armstrong whom he had been 
compelled to fight and had conquered when he 
first went to New Salem. The young man had 
been accused of murdering a companion and 
many witnesses swore to having seen him strike 
the blow; among them was one who was so cir- 
cumstantial that he told just where the moon 
was in the sky, a bright moon by which he had 
seen everything. Lincoln listened and ques- 
tioned and drew him out more and more, until it 
seemed as if there was not the smallest chance 
for poor young Armstrong. Then he called for 
an almanac and by it proved that at that time of 
night on the date testified to by the witness 
there was no moon at all ! The young man was 
triumphantly acquitted. 

But although Lincoln was so humble and so 
ready to forgive and, probably, to forget an 



150 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

injury to himself, yet lie could be aroused to 
great indignation by injustice, and when so 
roused he was terrible. In a murder case which 
he was defending, the judge kept ruling against 
him. At last, in a point around which the 
whole case centred the judge ruled against 
Lincoln again. The prosecution rejoiced and 
Lincoln grew despondent; he saw that defeat 
was sure unless he could recover his ground. 
He perceived that the Court's rulings were 
silly if not spiteful, and he began to think that 
they were aimed at him. He was very angry. 
"I have determined to crowd the Court to the 
wall and regain my position before night," he 
said. When the Court assembled in the after- 
noon Lincoln rose to read a few authorities in 
support of his position. And then he launched 
out. Keeping within bounds of propriety, so 
that he could not be reprimanded for contempt 
of court, he characterized the repeated rulings 
against him as unjust and foolish; and "figu- 
ratively speaking," says Herndon, "he pealed 
the Court from head to foot." The crowd, a 
part of the bar, and the jury were with him. 
He was so wrought up, so furious and eloquent 
by turns and all the while so right, finishing 
up with a story, that the judge pretended to 
see his former error and reversed his position 
in favor of Lincoln; the client was acquitted. 



HOW LINCOLN PRACTICED LAW. 151 

But Lincoln could never have done this had he 
not known the innocence of the man he was 
defending. 

One day an old negro woman came into Lin- 
coln's office and told her troubles. She and 
her children were born slaves in Kentucky ; but 
her owner had brought the whole family to 
Illinois and given them their freedom. Her 
son had gone down the Mississippi as waiter, 
or deck hand, on some of the steamboats. At 
New Orleans he had unwisely gone ashore, when 
the police had snatched him up and thrown 
him into prison in accordance with a law con- 
cerning free negroes from other States. Mr. 
Lincoln through his partner inquired of the 
governor if there was not something that he 
(the governor) could do to obtain possession 
of this free negro. The governor sent word 
that he was sorry to say that he "had no legal 
or constitutional right to do anything in the 
premises." Lincoln sprang up in great excite- 
ment, and exclaimed that he would have that 
negro back soon or he would have a twenty 
years' agitation in Illinois, "until the governor 
does have a legal and constitutional right to 
do something in the premises." He and Mr. 
Herndon sent money to a friend in New Orleans 
—their own money— and the negro was re- 
turned to his mother. 



152 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

All the time that Lincoln was at the bar he 
was interested, as was every patriot, in the 
politics of his country and watched the progress 
of the slave power with feelings of which the 
above incident gives the key. Yet he was grow- 
ing more and more fond of his profession, and 
the time had not yet come when, like a soldier 
marching to the front, he would leave every- 
thing for the battle of arguments in defence of 
the liberties of his country— the "Battle of the 
Giants," it was justly called. 



XX. 

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. 

At the time of the Revolution all the States 
tolerated slavery and allowed the slave-trade, 
that is, the bringing of more slaves from Africa. 
But many of the most prominent patriots, 
Washington among them, disapproved of slavery 
and thought it ought to be, and would be grad- 
ually abolished; they feared that it would cause 
confusion to do this at once. But a majority of 
public opinion demanded that the "necessary 
evil," as they called slavery, should cease. 
And the Ordinance of 1787 passed by Congress 
establishing government in the Territories had 
in it an article "ordaining the immediate and 
perpetual prohibition of slavery," in the Terri- 
tories. In a few years also the slave trade was 
to cease; and then slavery would gradually 
die out. The founders of the republic saw how 
inconsistent it was to fight for one's own free- 
dom and then enslave other men. 

153 



154 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Under the Ordinance of 1787, Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin were added 
to the Union as free States ; they had been part 
of the Territories. After this for about a 
whole generation the North and the South were 
evenly balanced as to power; for of the eight 
new States, four were north of the Ohio River 
and were free— Vermont, admitted in 1791; 
Ohio, in 1802; Indiana, in 1816; Illinois, in 1818. 
But Kentucky, admitted in 1792; Tennessee, in 
1796; Louisiana, in 1812; and Mississippi in 
1817 were slave States; and Alabama was also 
to be admitted as slave. 

But then the South was not satisfied; it 
wanted more slave States; and after much dis- 
cussion in Congress, it was decided that the 
''Louisiana purchase," that great strip of land 
bought from France and running from the Gulf 
to the Great Lakes, should be divided ; the part 
south of latitude 36° 30' should be slave ; and that 
part north of this line should be free ; Missouri 
should be admitted as a State, part slave and 
part free as the line 36° 30' ran through it ; and 
Maine should be admitted as a free State. This 
act was approved in March, 1820, and became 
the famous "Missouri Compromise." So, the 
old motto of the framers of the Constitution, 
"no extension of slavery" was thrust aside 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. 155 

until the Republicans brought it to the front 
in 1860. 

The South having brought in Arkansas a 
slave State, began to see that after they had 
Florida, which was admitted in 1845, there was 
nothing more for them to have as things stood 
then. So, by means of the Mexican war a 
large territory was taken from Mexico, larger 
than Texas rightfully was, and annexed to 
the United States, and Texas came in as a 
slave State, the largest State in the Union 
at that time. Then there was a bitter fight in 
Congress over the Territories of New Mexico 
and California which had come as part of the 
country gained by the war with Mexico. The 
South wanted to stretch the line of the Missouri 
Compromise out to the Pacific Ocean taking 
away the provision of 1787 for free Territories 
and making New Mexico slave and California 
half slave and half free, as the line 36° 30' ran 
across the State. At last, for the sake of peace 
and to save the Union, for the South threatened 
to secede if it did not have its way, a com- 
promise was agreed upon. Congress admitted 
California as a free State ; organized the Terri- 
tories of New Mexico and Utah as they had 
come from Mexico which had forbidden slavery; 
abolished the domestic slave trade in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia; and passed a more severe 



156 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

fugitive slave law; and gave Texas ten million 
dollars to adjust her State boundaries. This 
was the compromise of 1850. Neither North 
nor South liked it; but both accepted it for 
peace. 

In 1833 when Stephen A. Douglas came to 
Illinois he was twenty years old and penniless. 
First he was a clerk ; then he taught school ; he 
began to practice law the second year, and at 
twenty-two was elected attorney general of the 
State; in 1835 he was elected member of the 
Legislature ; and it was here that he and Abra- 
ham Lincoln met for the first time. In 1840 
he was secretary of State for Illinois; in 1843 
he was elected to Congress and re-elected in 
1844 and 1846. Before he took his seat under 
the last election he was elected to the United 
States Senate. In 1850, during the discussion 
of the compromise measures in the Senate, 
Douglas had especially defended the "Missouri 
Compromise. ' ' The year before that he had said 
it had "an origin akin to the Constitution" and 
the American people held it as "a sacred thing 
which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless 
enough to disturb." 

But in 1852 he was talked of as candidate for 
President, and was voted for in the Democratic 
National Convention held at Baltimore, June, 
1852 ; and although he did not receive the nomi- 



THE LINCOLN-DOIRJLAS DEBATES. 157 

nation, he believed that he should do so another 
time if he could get the votes of the South. The 
South wanted more lands for slavery; and 
Douglas determined to give over to slavery the 
Territories of Kansas and Nebraska which were 
soon to come into the Union as States. He 
preached "popular sovereignty," saying that 
the States ought to be free or slave as they 
themselves voted. He originated the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill to bring in these States as slave 
States; and to do this the "Missouri Compro- 
mise ' ' must be repealed. Through Mr. Douglas, 
it was repealed in the February of 1854. 

A great storm of anger and protest swept 
over the North ; they had looked for peace ; in- 
stead of this the slavery question was discussed 
in every State, every city and town and village, 
almost in every household. When Douglas re- 
turned to his own State and tried to speak to 
the people who had elected him, he was nearly 
mobbed in Chicago. 

But much more than this awaited him. He 
was to meet face to face a man to whom God 
had given power to lay bare his false statements 
and to speak the truth to the people in such 
way that the nation would listen to him. Abra- 
ham Lincoln had come to the front again. The 
"battle of the giants" was to begin. Lincoln 
was "intellectually energetic," Herndon says 



158 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

of him; "and more, he was industrious, tireless, 
indefatigable. Therefore, if in debate with him 
a man stood on a questionable foundation he 
might well watch whereon he stood. Lincoln 
could look a long distance ahead and calculate 
the triumph of right. With him justice and 
truth were paramount. If to him a thing 
seemed untrue, he could not in his nature simu- 
late truth." 

Opposition journals accused Lincoln of 
" mousing about the libraries in the State 
House." Yes; here was where he found the 
facts with which he overthrew his opponent ; he 
did not get his information at second-hand; 
it is said of him "he had fewer anecdotes and 
more history." Douglas had been making 
speeches through the State and people listened 
to him. At last he came to Springfield at the 
time that the State Fair was being held. Lead- 
ing men from nearly all the counties were 
there. The first day of the Fair, Douglas made 
a speech and announced that Mr. Lincoln of 
that city was expected to answer him. Lincoln 
spoke on the Kansas-Nebraska bill for which 
Douglas had caused the Missouri Compromise 
to be repealed, and made an overwhelming ex- 
posure of its wrong statements and wicked- 
ness. He quoted that Douglas had said it 
was an insult to the emigrants of Kansas 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. 159 

and Nebraska to suppose they were not able 
to govern themselves. "I admit that the emi- 
grant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to 
govern himself," said Mr. Lincoln, but I deny 
his right to govern any other person without 
that person's consent." For there was a great 
difference between Lincoln and Douglas; Lin- 
coln appreciated the honors of a Senator; but he 
would never pay the price that Douglas had 
done; for no reward that could be given him 
would he betray the cause that God had en- 
trusted him to defend and, later, to lead. His 
hearers knew as he made this answer that "pop- 
ular sovereignty" meant giving the South the 
States for slavery. Mr. Lincoln spoke for 
about four hours, and the crowd hung on his 
words; his great knowledge of the history of 
the whole question, his kindness of temper in 
his wonderful arguments, his wit and, best of 
all, his deep faith in his cause carried his audi- 
ence; his success was absolute. "His whole 
heart was in his words," said a Springfield 
paper; "he quivered with feeling and emotion; 
the whole house was still as death. When he 
had finished, every man felt that what he had 
said was unanswerable, nothing could overthrow 
it. Douglas felt that, too; he struggled to say 
something to weaken Lincoln's victory. Before 
that time Lincoln had been leader in his dis- 



160 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

trict ; after this one debate with Douglas, Abra- 
ham Lincoln was leader in the State on this new 
question that filled the hearts of the nation." 

He was called for at all the places where 
Douglas was to speak; and twelve days after 
the Springfield debate the two met at Peoria. 
Lincoln as he had done before gave the opening 
and closing speeches to Douglas, saying that 
in this way the Democrats would hear him, for 
they would wait to hear Douglas' reply. When 
Lincoln came home he wrote out his speech and 
published it. Douglas had said in regard to 
slavery that he did not care whether slavery 
was voted up or down. But Lincoln in answer- 
ing explained what had been the purposes of 
the founders of the country in regard to slavery ; 
everywhere he showed how unjust and wicked 
slavery was. He said that we ought to return 
to these purposes once more. And he said also 
that so long as we held slaves in America, the 
world did not believe so much in us as a re- 
public. 

"Allow all the governed an equal voice in the 
government ; that, and that only, is self-govern- 
ment. ' ' 

"I particularly object to the new position 
which the avowed principle of the Nebraska 
law gives to slavery in the body politic. I ob- 




I'opijriv-lit. l'.«l, Vij McChirc, Ftull]),- S I',.. 

THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS MEETING AT GALESBURG, ILLINOIS. 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES. 161 

ject to it because it assumes that there can be 
moral right in the enslaving of one man by 
another." 

Lincoln said so many things and said them so 
clearly that he convinced whoever heard him. 
He wanted to go on answering Douglas in differ- 
ent parts of the State. But Douglas did not 
want it at all. It is said that he told Lincoln 
that he himself would go home and make no 
more speeches if Lincoln would do the same. 
Lincoln said that he would not call him out 
again ; but he did not give up speaking during 
the campaign. 

Lincoln's name came up for Senator; but as 
there was a division in the Whig party, he 
withdrew his name to unite the party, and Mr. 
Trumbull was sent to Congress instead. Lin- 
coln would have liked the place ; but in this we 
can see now that he was led. For a greater 
work was before him. And the Lincoln-Douglas 
debates were not yet over. 



XXI. 

Lincoln in New York and New England. 

The year 1858 was the time when Douglas 
was to be re-elected Senator to Congress, or 
some one else was to take his place. Abraham 
Lincoln wished to be the one to take his place, 
and he prepared to stump the State in opposi- 
tion to him. Douglas whose fault it was origi- 
nally that the people in Kansas had such a 
period of struggle and suffering, had at last 
turned against the unlawful measures of the 
South when he perceived that the North would 
not endure any more; so he came back to the 
contest stronger for the part he had just taken. 
But the people in Illinois knew him; and Lin- 
coln saw that he was working to be elected 
President in 1860. The Democratic State Con- 
vention of Illinois in April, 1858, endorsed 
Douglas for re-election as Senator. The Repub- 
lican State Convention, however, which met in 
June passed a resolution : "That Abraham Lin- 

162 



LINCOLN IN NEW YORK. 163 

coin is our first and only choice for United 
States Senator to fill the vacancy about to be 
created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas ' term 
of office." 

Then the Convention must follow Lincoln 
wherever he led. He had been preparing his 
speech carefully, jotting down on scraps of 
paper thought after thought as it came to him. 
Then he put them together to speak and print. 
"It was not the work of a mere politician," 
says Stoddard, "it was the thoughtful expres- 
sion of a human life ; the thoughts had been 
growing through gloomy, toilsome years. ' ' 

Mr. Lincoln read a part of his speech to some 
of his friends before delivering it in the Con- 
vention. They said to him: "You must not 
say that; it's ahead of the time; if you say that 
you will never be elected." "That makes no 
difference, " said Lincoln. "I ivill deliver it 
as it is written. I want to use some universally 
known figure, expressed in simple language as 
universally known, that may strike home to the 
miuds of men in order to rouse them to the peril 
of the times. I would rather be defeated with 
this expression in the speech, and it held up 
and discussed before the people, than to be vic- 
torious without it." Here was the great differ- 
ence between Lincoln and Douglas, Douglas 
loved himself and a high office best of all ; Lin- 



164 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

coin loved his country and God's truth, before 
his own gain. So, although all his party who 
heard this statement, except his partner, Hern- 
don, warned him not to say it, Lincoln followed 
his own conscience and this is what he said on 
that 16th of June, 1858 : 

" Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could 
first know where we are and whither we are 
tending, we could then better judge what to do 
and how to do it. We are now far on into the 
fifth year since a jjolicy was initiated with the 
avowed object and confident promise of putting 
an end to slavery agitation. Under the opera- 
tion of that policy, that agitation has not only 
not ceased, but has continually augmented. In 
my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall 
have been reached and passed. 'A house 
divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe 
this government cannot endure permanently, 
half slave and half free. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the 
house to fall; but I do expect that it will 
cease to be divided. It will become all one 
thing or all the other. Either the opponents 
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
and place it where the public mind shall rest 
in the belief that it is in course of ultimate 
extinction, or its advocates will push it forward 
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, 



LINCOLN IN NEW YORK. 165 

old as well as new, North as well as South." 
From this beginning Lincoln went on until he 
ended with this trumpet note of courage : ' ' The 
result is not doubtful. We shall not fail— if we 
stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels 
may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but sooner 
or later, the victory is sure to come." 

It was not strange that as he had spoken 
God's words, at his own peril, his heart should 
be filled with God's faith. 

A few days afterward a friend assured him 
that those foolish words of his would defeat 
him in the contest for the senatorship and that 
the friend was so very sorry; he wished they 
could be wiped out of existence. "Don't you 
wish it, now!" he asked. 

Stoddard tells us that Lincoln dropped his 
pen and answered: " 'Well, doctor, if I had to 
draw a pen across and erase my whole life from 
existence, and I had one poor gift or choice 
left as to what I should save from the wreck, 
I should choose that speech and leave it to the 
world unerased.' " 

' ' The battle of the giants ' ' began again when 
Douglas went through the State vindicating his 
own acts and accusing and maligning Lincoln's 
political position, and Lincoln answered him 
from point to point and defeated his arguments 
on each. But the prediction of the result of Lin- 



166 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

coin's speech before the Convention proved 
true ; he was defeated for the senatorship which 
he much desired ; he could not know then that he 
was withdrawn for a higher place. When some 
one asked him how he felt about this defeat, he 
said that he supposed he felt like the stripling 
who had bruised his toe— "too badly to laugh 
and too big to cry." 

But Lincoln's fame had grown far wider than 
at first his friends realized. In his contest 
with Douglas he had forced the latter from a 
position which even his victory as Senator could 
not retrieve for him. And more than this, he 
had shown the whole country most clearly just 
what the issue was between the North and the 
South, and that slavery was the root of the 
trouble; and his wonderful comparison of the 
country as a house divided against itself had 
made thinking men everywhere understand that 
things would not and could not be left to take 
care of themselves ; that it was true this country 
would become all slave, every State in it, unless 
the North stood for freedom as strongly as the 
South stood and fought for slavery. It was not 
then a question of actual battle with bayonets, 
but of political combinations and victory of the 
ballot box. Lincoln had stirred the hearts of 
the people; everywhere they were reading his 
speeches. Already, to the nation he was a 



LINCOLN IN NEW YORK. 167 

leader, if not yet the leader of the mighty forces 
marshaling to resist at the polls the inroads of 
slavery. For the North was not a coward; it 
had long been quiet for the sake of peace and 
the Union. But since the repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise, it had been upon the alert. 

So, the country was more than ready to listen 
to Lincoln. In October he received an invita- 
tion to deliver a lecture in Cooper Institute, New 
York City. He never worked so hard as he did 
over that speech. The day after its delivery 
the New York Tribune said: "No man ever 
before made such an impression on his first 
appeal to a New Y T ork audience." The people, 
some of the most scholarly and critical in the 
city, had come together expecting to hear a rough 
Westerner who had made a great impression 
upon Western audiences; they expected to be 
amused and interested by "stump oratory." 
It was an address not to themselves alone but 
to the whole American people ; it was a masterly 
exposition of slavery in its whole history and 
purposes from the foundation of the government 
up to that present time in the February of 1860. 
It showed a comprehension of political move- 
ments and developments that astonished even 
careful students of politics ; and a mental train- 
ing and penetration into causes, and perception 
of results that scholars admired. The crowd 



168 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

who came to hear ''stump oratory" went away 
saying: "A great orator! A great man!" 

One of Mr. Lincoln's errands at the East had 
been to visit his oldest son, Robert, then a stu- 
dent at Harvard College. But invitations to 
speak poured in upon him from all quarters; 
all over New England people wanted to hear 
him and to learn of the cause in which he spoke. 
Everywhere he went the people were delighted 
with him, as were his own people in Illinois. 
And he, too, was studying men and things and 
learning much that was of use to him in his 
high office. When at last he returned to his 
own home he was "better and more widely 
known," says a writer, "than nine out of every 
ten who sit out a long term in the United States 
Senate." 

One who often heard him speak and who knew 
him well wrote of him that when Mr. Lincoln be- 
gan to speak he was awkward and embarrassed 
in his movements and gestures. But all this 
soon wore off; as he forgot everything in his 
subject and his audience, dignity, power, expres- 
sion, inspiration came to him ; his gestures were 
no longer awkward, but eloquent and always 
effective, because they were always natural, the 
expression of his own emotion. "When he and 
Douglas spoke together, Douglas charmed 
crowds by his eloquence, his grace and skill; 



LINCOLN IN NEW YORK. 169 

but after the meetings were over and the people 
had gone to their homes, it was Lincoln's logic 
and his appeal to manhood that they remem- 
bered. 

But not yet did Lincoln foresee that it was 
his hand which by the grace of God was to make 
all free that " house" of his beloved country 
then " divided against itself." 



XXII. 

The Organization of the Republican 
Party. 

Lincoln in one of his speeches had said that 
the South was wrong in accusing the North of 
being "radical;" it was the South itself which 
was radical and had changed the basis of the 
slavery question. The North was conserva- 
tive; it desired to go back to the position that 
the founders of the republic had held in regard 
to slavery— to keep it from spreading, and to 
wait for its gradual abolition by the slave States 
themselves. 

This had been the belief of many men at the 
North, in spite of the great strides that slavery 
had been taking over the country. But at the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise the North 
awoke. As the Poet Whittier sang years before 
in his inspiring "Voices of Freedom" which 
found an echo in the hearts of thousands of 
people ; 

"The land is roused — its spirit 
Was sleeping, but not dead!" 
170 



ORGANIZATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY. 171 

Thetre was agitation, trouble, perplexity 
everywhere. But through it all, those who 
believed in freedom began to draw together to 
defend themselves against the encroachments 
of the slave power. Some men like William 
Lloyd Garrison stood on the moral wrong of 
slavery alone and did not believe in fighting it 
on other ground. But Whittier, Sumner, and 
other leaders of the Abolitionists believed that 
the struggle for liberty must come through the 
ballot. So, Abolitionists, the old Whigs — to 
which Lincoln belonged and which had gone to 
pieces as a separate party— Know-Nothings, 
Free-Soilers and all organizations which had 
freedom for their object perceived that if they 
would have victory at the polls they must be 
one party and not many. In 1856 they strug- 
gled to elect Fremont, the candidate of freedom. 
But in place of Fremont, Buchanan, a Democrat, 
was made President. But the party for freedom 
had shown much force. 

In the May of 1856 there was a State Repub- 
lican Convention at Bloomington, Illinois. And 
here the Republican party in Illinois was first 
organized and named. Of course, Lincoln was 
there ; and, of course, he spoke. Herndon says 
that that speech was the greatest of Lincoln's 
life. "It was full of fire and energy and force; 
it was logic; it was pathos; he felt justice; his 



172 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

heart was alive to the right; enthusiasm unusual 
to him blazed up ; his eyes were aglow with 
inspiration; he stood before the throne of the 
eternal Right." 

Lincoln had been made one of the Presidential 
Electors, as he usually was, and he canvassed 
the State for Fremont, making about fifty 
speeches. He was invited to speak everywhere, 
Indiana and Wisconsin sent for him, and Iowa. 
"Come to our place," wrote an enthusiastic 
officer there; "because in you do our people 
place more confidence than in any other man. 
People who do not read want the story told as 
you only can tell it. Others may make fine 
speeches, but it would not be: ' Lincoln said so 
in his speech.' " A settlement of Germans in 
southern Indiana wanted to hear him; and the 
president of a college spoke of him as "one 
providentially raised up for a time like this, and 
even should defeat come in the contest, it would 
be some consolation to remember we had Hector 
for a leader." 

But before very long it was not defeat but 
victory that was coming in the contest. One 
day while Lincoln was speaking for Fremont a 
voice from the audience called out: "Mr. Lin- 
coln, is it true that you entered this State bare- 
foot, driving a yoke of oxen?" Mr. Lincoln 
paused a moment, as if he wondered whether 



ORGANIZATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY. 173 

he should pay any attention to such imperti- 
nence. At last he answered that he thought he 
could prove the fact by at least a dozen men in 
the crowd, every one more respectable than his 
questioner. Then he seemed inspired by the 
question and went on to show what free institu- 
tions had done for himself and how bad slavery 
was for the white man, and asked why he should 
not hate slavery and agitate against it? "We 
will speak for freedom and against slavery," 
he said, "as long as the Constitution of our 
country guarantees free speech, until every- 
where on this wide land, the sun shall shine 
and the rain shall fall and the wind shall blow 
upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil." 
The man who had tried to embarrass him had 
only made him the more eloquent. The Repub- 
lican governor was elected and a large vote 
polled for Fremont, in Illinois. 

This was before Mr. Lincoln spoke in New 
York and New England ; and before that second 
"battle of the giants" with Douglas in 1858 
when through the newspapers all the country 
had been present. From that time he continu- 
ally rose in importance to the people of the 
country. It was a great astonishment to him 
to find himself admired by educated persons. 
A gentleman who had listened to him in 
Norwich, Connecticut, met him on the train the 



174 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

following day and told him that he himself had 
learned more of the art of public speaking from 
his speech of the previous evening, than he 
could have done from a whole course of lectures 
on rhetoric. Lincoln in genuine amazement re- 
plied by mentioning a professor of rhetoric 
in Yale College who had taken notes of his 
speech and taught his class from them the 
next day, and who had followed him to Meriden 
and heard him again for the same reason. He 
had not expected any triumph among the culti- 
vated men of the East; it was "very extra- 
ordinary," he said. As he and the stranger 
were about to separate, the latter told him that 
in this great struggle with slavery, he, Lincoln, 
had become one of the leaders. "Be true to 
your principles," he said, "and we will be true 
to you, and God will be true to us all." Mr. 
Lincoln took the speaker's hand in both his own. 
"I say amen to that ! amen to that !" he cried. 

The February before the Illinois Republican 
Convention at Bloomington which has been 
spoken of, there had been held at Pittsburgh on 
the twenty-second — Washington's birthday — a 
general gathering of prominent Republicans 
and anti-Nebraska politicians and other earnest 
men from the free States and a few from the 
border slave States, between three and four 
hundred active leaders representing twenty- 



ORGANIZATION OF REPUBLICAN PARTY. 175 

eight States and Territories. It was an in- 
formal meeting; but it prepared the way for 
more. The members were moderate and care- 
ful ; but many of the delegates were men known 
all over the country. This meeting in its resolu- 
tions made four demands: "The repeal of all 
laws which allowed slavery to be brought into 
Territories only consecrated to freedom; resist- 
ance by constitutional means to slavery in any 
United States Territory; the immediate admis- 
sion of Kansas as a free State; and the over- 
throw of the Democratic national administra- 
tion." And it issued a call for the first National 
Convention of the Republican party to meet at 
Philadelphia, June 17, 1856. That was the Con- 
vention which, as we know, nominated John C. 
Fremont, a great explorer of our Western coun- 
try and an earnest anti-slavery man, as candi- 
date for the next President. And here also Lin- 
coln received over one hundred votes for Vice- 
president, but Dayton was finally chosen. It 
has been said that Lincoln worked hard in his 
own State and in other States to have Fremont 
elected ; and so did many other determined men. 
But as we have seen, they were unsuccessful. 
Buchanan was our next President. 

After the Bloomington Convention, when a 
meeting to endorse it was called at Springfield, 
nobody seemed interested ; only three were pres- 



176 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ent, Lincoln, his partner Herndon, and another 
man. But Lincoln said that they must not be 
discouraged ; things looked dead ; but they were 
living for all that ; the cause was great ; God was 
in it, and some day it would succeed. 



XXIII. 
In the Wigwam at Chicago. 

In 1858, after Lincoln had been defeated by 
Douglas as a Senator from Illinois, he wrote to 
a friend: "You doubtless have seen ere this 
the result of the election here. Of course, I 
wished, but I did not much expect, a better re- 
sult. I am glad I made the late race.' It gave 
me a hearing on the great and durable question 
of the age" (slavery) "which I could have had 
in no other way ; and though I now sink out of 
sight and shall be forgotten, I believe I have 
made some marks which will tell for the cause 
of civil liberty long after I am gone." 

Lincoln was here referring to his debates with 
Douglas of that same year when Douglas was 
running for Senator and Lincoln had brought, 
him so before the country by Douglas' own 
words in his political answers that in 1860, when 
Douglas wanted to be President, the South 
would have nothing to do with him, although 

177 



178 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

lie had gone through some of the Southern 
States making speeches to uphold slavery. The 
Convention at Charleston said that Douglas 
had gone back from his former position because 
he was so anxious to please the people of Illi- 
nois; and he had secured his election as Senator 
from that State. But he should never get votes 
for President from the South. 

And he never did. 

When the Republican National Convention 
met in Chicago, May 16, 1860, important events 
had happened since the Philadelphia Convention 
of 1856. Kansas had narrowly escaped by fraud 
and violence within its borders and aid of the 
administration from being forced to become a 
slave State contrary to the wishes of its people ; 
Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts, 
who in 1856 had been struck down and nearly 
murdered in the Senate because he had declared 
the wrongs of Kansas, had come back to his seat 
there after years of illness, had declared the 
''Barbarism of Slavery" in a speech in the Sen- 
ate which rang through the North; Lincoln in 
his own State, in Ohio, in New York, New Eng- 
land and elsewhere had thoroughly shown that 
the aggressions of the slave power were contrary 
to the Constitution; that the famous "Dred 
Scott" decision of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, that the black man had no rights 



IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 179 

which the white man was bound to respect, was 
illegal and monstrous, and many others whether 
lawyers or not held the same opinion ; John 
Brown's raid and execution had aroused public 
feeling North and South; many things had 
served to prove that the contest between slavery 
and freedom was growing hotter and that the 
Republican party, if it would make a firm stand 
against more aggression, if it would again put 
slavery upon the ground that it had when the 
government was formed, must make choice of a 
leader wise and firm, and one who would be able 
to secure the support of the people. 

Of late years one name had been more and 
more frequently in the hearts and on the lips 
of Republicans, the name of the man who in 1858 
had been defeated as Senator from Illinois, but 
whose words of wisdom and courage and power 
had been taken up all over the land. The Lin- 
coln-Douglas debates had been published and 
had been sold by many thousands, so that those 
who had never heard Lincoln speak had read 
his words. 

Something else also happened before the 
meeting of the Republican National Convention 
at Chicago. The Republican State Convention 
of Illinois was held at Decatur about a week 
earlier than the other. Mr. Lincoln's friends 
determined that the first Convention should 



180 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

sound the note for the other one. But they said 
nothing to him of their plans. Mr. Lincoln 
attended the Convention, but he was among the 
audience. Gov. Oglesby rose and said, as Mr. 
Stoddard tells us: "I am informed that a dis- 
tinguished citizen of Illinois, and one whom 
Illinois will ever be delighted to honor, is pres- 
ent; and I wish to move that this body invite 
him to a seat upon the stand." After pausing 
a moment he added in a clear voice: "Abraham 
Lincoln ! ' ' 

The dense crowd shouted its enthusiasm, and 
Lincoln was actually borne over their heads and 
shoulders to his seat of honor. After the busi- 
ness of the meeting had gone on for a while, 
the Governor rose again, and said: "There is 
an old Democrat outside who has something he 
wishes to present to this Convention." Then 
the door opened and a strong old man came 
marching in with two fence rails on his shoulder 
and on them a banner which had in large letters : 

"TWO RAILS 
from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John 
Hanks, in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year 
1830." 

The bearer was John Hanks. 

In an instant, "Abraham Lincoln, the rail- 
splitter" was accepted as "the representative 
of the working man and the embodiment of the 



IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 181 

American idea of human freedom and possible 
human elevation." A great wave of enthusiasm 
swept over the audience. It was destined to 
sweep to Chicago, and thence over the North. 

When the crowd called on Lincoln for a speech, 
he said that in 1830, John Hanks and he did 
make some rails in the Sangamon bottom to 
fence a piece of land; he didn't know whether 
those were the same rails; he didn't think they 
were a credit to their makers; and he thought 
he could make better rails now. His listeners 
laughed and shouted and listened to him fur- 
ther. But the thing was done. Abraham Lin- 
coln was the choice of the Convention for Presi- 
dent of the United States, and the delegates 
were instructed to cast the vote of the State as 
a unit for him. 

In the National Republican Convention at 
Chicago, William H. Seward was considered the 
strongest man; and besides the regular dele- 
gates many of his personal and political friends 
were present, as were those of the other possible 
candidates. There was no building in Chicago 
at that time which had a hall large enough to ac- 
commodate ten thousand persons, and it was es- 
timated that about that number was at the Con- 
vention. A temporary frame building called 
"The Wigwam" was put up for the occasion, 
so arranged that all the important personages 



182 LIFE OF LLXCOLX FOR BOYS. 

could be seen, and every speech could be heard. 
And here was made a choice at which coming 
generations, as well as those past, have reason 
to rejoice. 

After the opening prayer and a few items of 
business, Mr. Evarts of New York stood forth 
and named "as a candidate to be nominated by 
this Convention for the office of President of the 
United States, William H. Seward." Then Mr. 
Jndd desired "on behalf of the delegation from 
Illinois, to put in nomination as a candidate for 
President of the United States, Abraham Lin- 
coln, of Illinois." After this were names of 
others who were to be complimented, as the cus- 
tom was, by the first votes of their States ; these 
"complimentary" men were cheered by their 
own States. "But," says an account, "at the 
names of Seward and Lincoln the whole wigwam 
seemed to respond together." Some States 
seconded one candidate, and some the other. In 
the shouting and stamping the. whole building 
shook. Then the balloting began. 

The first ballot gave one hundred seventy- 
three and one-half votes to Seward, and one 
hundred and two for Lincoln, witli many scat- 
tering votes. In the next ballot Lincoln had 
gained seventy-nine votes, Seward only eleven. 
Two hundred and thirty-three votes were needed 
for a choice. The balloting went on again. 



IN THE WIGWAM AT CHICAGO. 183 

Lincoln was still gaining. At last, a teller waved 
his tally sheet and shouted a name, a cannon 
was fired from the roof of the wigwam, the 
crowds in the streets took up the shouts of those 
within the wigwam. At last, when he could be 
heard, the presiding officer announced that on 
the third ballot Abraham Lincoln of Illinois had 
received three hundred and sixty-four votes and 
was ''the candidate of the Convention for Presi- 
dent of the United States." Then Mr. Evarts 
with great dignity and eloquence moved to make 
the nomination unanimous. 

It was a busy campaign to elect the "Illinois 
Rail-Splitter." "Wide-Awake" Clubs were 
organized all over the country, the Republicans 
in these "marching in close and orderly ranks, 
wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, 
and bearing over his shoulders a long staff, on 
the end of which blazed a brilliant torch-light." 
The first "Wide-Awake" Club was in Hartford, 
Connecticut, and escorted Mr. Lincoln when he 
went to that city directly after his speech at the 
Cooper Institute, New York. 

In the campaign the "W 7 ide Awakes" were 
everywhere. Sometimes in the great cities there 
were twenty thousand marching in a procession ; 
and no village was too small to have its "Wide 
Awakes." No doubt, they did give evidence of 
being awake to the situation. For as the months 



184 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

went by, the prospects of the Republicans grew 
better and better. In the great battle of the 
ballot between freedom and slavery, freedom 
was to conquer. The other terrible battles of 
the bayonets, the war for the Union — was to 
follow. 

The election for President came November 6, 
1860. 

When the polls closed that day, Abraham 
Lincoln was elected President of the United 
States. 



XXIV. 

What the South Was Doing in the 
Winter of 1860-61. 

The South of the time of which we are speak- 
ing was very different from the South as we 
know it today. The Southerners were always 
brave and cordial in their manners and hospi- 
table, and they have always had as they have 
now many fine traits of character. 

But when we think of the South as it was at 
the time of the Civil War, we must remember 
those words of Abraham Lincoln's, one of the 
most beautiful thoughts ever uttered. "With 
malice toward none, with charity for all," he 
said in his second inaugural address. And it is 
in this spirit that we must judge the South of 
that day. It caused the country to spend thou- 
sands of millions of dollars in bringing it back 
to the Union. And the money was a small 
thing ; for thousands upon thousands of the best 
and bravest young men were killed in the battles 

185 



186 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

and the sufferings of the terrible Civil War; 
fathers and mothers mourned for their sons; 
wives for their husbands; children for their 
fathers; maidens for their lovers; friends for 
friends; in every city, and even in every little 
village in the country, from household to house- 
hold there was mourning for the brave soldiers 
who had died. It was a time of grief and dread 
and agony ; there were days when it seemed as 
if there would no longer be our great nation, 
but only a country divided and always at war. 
But if the South made the North suffer in this 
way, it also suffered itself in some ways even 
much more. It was not so rich as the North in 
the first place ; and it grew so poor that before 
the war was over people were hungry, almost 
starving; and, at last, there was no food for the 
soldiers. Then, the war was fought in the South 
altogether, except two or three battles; and 
where armies marched and bivouacked and 
fought, the country was made desolate; forests 
cut down, earth torn up for ramparts, fields of 
grain trampled, cattle and forage driven and 
carried away, and all that was fine and blooming 
before the armies came left like a wilderness. 
And much more than all this, the South lost its 
best and bravest young men as well as the 
North ; and in all homes was sadness and 
mourning. 



WHAT THE SOUTH WAS DOING. 187 

But the Southerners believed with all their 
hearts that they were righting for their own land 
and their freedom; they never thought of the 
whole land as their own but only of the South 
and especially of their own State. For a whole 
generation of them had been educated to believe 
in slavery and State's Rights. They thought 
that allegiance was due to their own State above 
any allegiance that they owed to the nation, and 
that the rights of their States were being 
trampled upon, and must be defended. Many 
of the Southerners really believed that the 
North intended to destroy their liberties. 

In some way, the end of this state of things 
had to come ; and the whole country is glad that 
out of all the suffering and strife came good 
results. One of these was that when the North- 
ern soldiers and the Southern soldiers stood 
face to face and fought each other day after 
day, and sometimes the wounded of one side 
were cared for and helped by the other, they 
learned that after all they were brothers, and 
now they have come to love one another. And 
then the cause of all the trouble — slavery — was 
taken away. So, after long years it has come to 
pass that North and South no longer stand face 
to face like foes, but shoulder to shoulder, like 
true brothers, as they are. In this narrative we 
shall have to recall many hard times and terrible 



188 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

battles and wrongs. But through all we must 
remember that these days have gone by. 

In the Presidential campaign of 1860, the 
extreme Democrats of the party to which Jeffer- 
son Davis and others like him belonged, nom- 
inated John C. Breckinridge for President and 
declared that slavery was morally right and a 
blessing to the country and that they would 
extend it into the Territories and into new 
States. The regular Democratic party nomi- 
nated Douglas and declared that it did not care 
whether slavery was right or wrong, or limited 
or extended; it would let the people of the Terri- 
tories do as they pleased about it, and would 
obey the Constitution and the Supreme Court. 
The party which nominated Bell and Everett, 
pretended to ignore slavery and stand only by 
''the Constitution, the t T nion, and the Laws." 
But the Republican party believed slavery 
morally wrong and hurtful to society, and in- 
tended to restrict it to where it was at that time 
under the constitutions and laws of the slave 
States. 

The leader of this party, the man who had 
declared the Kansas-Nebraska bill to mean: 
"That if any one man chooses to enslave 
another, no third man shall be allowed to 
object," Abraham Lincoln, in November, 1860, 
was elected President of the Lnited States. 



WHAT THE SOUTH WAS DOING. 189 

This meant to the South that in its own prov- 
ince it would not be interfered with; but that 
there were people in the country with both will 
and vote ; and the South could not then rule the 
nation by the ballot. 

Seeing this, the Southern leaders withdrew 
their States from the Union to form a Southern 
Confederacy. Many of the Southern people did 
not realize what they were doing ; and some did 
not want to go; but they were swept on in the 
tide. Indeed, the people of some of the States 
never had a chance to say whether they wanted 
to secede or not ; they were not asked to vote on 
the matter; they simply followed their leaders. 

South Carolina, however, was delighted to 
go out of the Union, and passed an ordinance 
of secession on the twentieth of December, 1860 ; 
Mississippi seceded the ninth of the following 
January; and Alabama, Florida, Georgia soon 
after; Louisiana went out January twenty- 
eighth; and Texas, February first. On the 
sixth of February delegates from these seven 
States met at Montgomery, Alabama, and organ- 
ized the "Confederate States of America"; they 
elected Jefferson Davis as President, and he 
was installed on the eighteenth. Then a law 
was passed to raise an army for these Confed- 
erate States and in place of the dear old "stars 
and stripes" of our flag, they made a flag of 



100 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

"stars and bars." As we know, Virginia fol- 
lowed these States; and so did Arkansas; and 
in Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mis 
souri, border States, there was a hard struggle 
between the loyal and the disloyal men. 

Many more Southerners than Northerners 
had been educated at the United States Wesl 
Point Military Academy. A large number of 
these officers followed their States and gave 
their services to the Southern Confederacy; 
there were between two and three hundred of 
these. So when it came to a question of war 
between North and South, these skilfully trained 
officers were a great loss to the North. But 
many of these men went over to the South 
promptly and openly; and although they were 
false to the country which had educated them, 
they did the thing they believed right; for, as 
has been said, they had been taught that they 
owed allegiance to their State rather than to 
the nation. Those officers who were true to the 
nation had a hard time, if they happened to be 
stationed at the South, in getting away and 
offering their services to their country. 

But there was another class of men ; and what 
word can we have for these? They were men 
who kept their positions of trust under the 
United States government, some even in Presi- 
dent Buchanan's cabinet, learned all the secrets 



.WHAT THE SOUTH WAS DOING. 191 

of the forts and arsenals and arms belonging 
to the nation, sent the ships away to foreign 
ports in order that they might not be on hand 
at time of need, stole for the Southern Confed- 
eracy all the government arms and ammunition 
they could lay hands on, captured some of the 
forts in Southern harbors, and in every way 
possible deceived and frightened the weak Presi- 
dent into yielding to their wishes. 

It would take a volume to tell of all the things 
that were going on at the South where every- 
body was preparing for war ; at the North where 
everybody hoped that war need not come; in 
Congress where parties were trying to patch up 
a peace; in the army where the most skilful 
officers were resigning from their commands; in. 
the navy where many officers were false to their 
trusts, although many were very true— all the 
country was in stress and strain, doing it did 
not realize what, waiting for it knew not what. 
For very much went on between November, 
1860, and the following March, 1861. 

But Abraham Lincoln was not yet President ; 
he was only President-elect. He could do 
nothing yet to oust the traitors from the cabinet 
and councils of Buchanan. 



XXV. 

What the New President Had to Face. 

When Abraham Lincoln had been elected 
President of the United States he was still the 
same kindly man and had the same care for the 
pleasure of others as when in the old days he 
used to ride the circuit and in the evenings 
instead of enjoying himself at the inns with the 
other lawyers, would often walk far to visit 
some old friend of his humbler days. Once 
when urged not to go, as he would have to walk 
several miles, he answered: "Why, aunt's 
heart would be broken if I should leave town 
without calling upon her." 

Now, so many people from all parts were con- 
stantly coming to call upon the President-elect 
that he could not receive them all in his own 
home and a large room in the State House was 
set apart for him to receive his guests. But 
there was no ceremony; there were no ushers 
to present them, or even servants to attend the 

192 




LINCOLN, AT THE TIME OF HIS ELECTION AS PRESIDENT. 
From an unretouclied negative. 



WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 193 

door; whoever wished to do so opened the door 
and walked in, and he received a kind greeting 
and probably carried away with him some word 
that he would remember. 

But these were very busy days with Mr. Lin- 
coln. Many of his friends seemed to feel that 
because they were his friends he should give 
them an office; and although when they were 
well suited to the place desired, he sometimes 
did this, he was far from making a rule ; he said 
that public offices were not to be distributed as 
a reward of private friendship. He had the 
idea of civil service reform long before it was 
spoken of in the country and when it was the 
custom of every administration to turn out of 
office all those whom the former administration 
had appointed and to put in its own men as per- 
sonal friends, or to reward political services, or 
to give the office-holders an opportunity to work 
for that party. The famous motto: "To the 
victors belong the spoils," refers to this cus- 
tom, and the "spoils of office" mean the same 
thing. 

In the selection of his cabinet, that is, the 
heads of the departments of state, army and 
navy, and the other departments most closely 
connected with the President and constantly 
meeting and advising with him, Lincoln showed 
the same spirit; he called around him, not his 



194 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

personal friends, but men of influence from 
different parts of the country who represented 
the feeling of their section and who were skil- 
ful in the duties required of them. William H. 
Seward whom he had defeated as Presidential 
nominee in the Chicago convention, he invited 
to be secretary of state, and Salmon P. Chase 
of Ohio, a skilful financier, to be secretary of 
the treasury. It needed such a man, for the 
Republicans when they came into office found 
the public treasury empty. Lincoln was so 
anxious to be fair to all the people and give the 
South a representation also, that at one time he 
would have invited Mr. Stephens of Georgia 
into his cabinet ; but he was afraid that Georgia 
would secede and take him with her ; and this is 
what happened ; for Mr. Stephens became Vice- 
president of the new Confederacy. 

Mr. Lincoln decided to leave Springfield in 
season to visit a few of the large cities and meet 
the people there on his way to his inauguration. 
On the morning of the eleventh of February, 
1861, he and his party left Springfield. It was 
a cold, rainy morning. Long before the hour 
for starting a great crowd of his fellow-citi- 
zens had collected at the station. A few 
minutes before the hour Mr. Lincoln passed 
through the crowd shaking hands with as many 
as possible, and stepped upon the rear platform 



WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 195 

of his train. ' ' Here, ' ' says Mr. Lamon, ' ' facing 
about to the throng which had closed around 
him, he drew himself up to his full height, re- 
moved his hat, and stood for several seconds in 
profound silence. His eye roved sadly over that 
sea of upturned faces ; and he thought he read 
in them again the sympathy and friendship 
which he had often tried, and which he never 
needed more than he did then. There was an 
unusual quiver in his lip, and a still more un- 
usual tear on his shrivelled cheek. His solemn 
manner, his long silence, were as full of mel- 
ancholy eloquence as any words he could have 
uttered. . . . Imitating his example, every man 
in the crowd stood with his head uncovered in 
the fast-falling rain. 

" 'Friends,' " he said at last, " 'no one who 
has never been placed in a like position can 
understand my feelings at this hour, nor the 
oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For 
more than a quarter of a century I have lived 
among you, and during all that time I have re- 
ceived nothing but kindness at your hands. 
Here I have lived from my youth, until now I 
am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of 
earth were assumed. Here all my children 
were born; and here one of them lies buried. 
To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, 
all that I am, All the strange, checkered past 



196 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I 
leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult 
than that which devolved upon Washington. 
Unless the great God who assisted him, shall 
be with me and aid me, I must fail ; but if the 
same omniscient Mind and almighty Arm that 
directed and protected him shall guide and sup- 
port me, I shall not fail— I shall succeed. Let 
us all pray that the God of our fathers may not 
forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. 
Permit me to ask, that, with equal security and 
faith, you will invoke His wisdom and guidance 
for me. With these few words I must leave 
you ; for how long I know not. Friends, one 
and all, I must now bid you an affectionate 
farewell.' " 

Did any warning come to him as he stood 
there that never again would he look into these 
well-known faces? Was any hint given to him 
at the moment that when next he came to 
Springfield he would be borne there as the mar- 
tyred President and that these same faces 
would gaze upon him with sadness and tears? 

Mr. Lincoln had great public receptions at 
Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburg, 
Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, New York City and 
Philadelphia. Then there were stops at places 
on the route where Lincoln showed himself and 
spoke to the people. At one of these he said: 



WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 197 

' ' Let me tell you that if the people remain right, 
your public men can never betray you. If, in 
my brief term of office, I shall be wicked or 
foolish, if you remain right and true and honest 
you cannot be betrayed. My power is tempor- 
ary and fleeting— yours as eternal as the prin- 
ciples of liberty. Cultivate and protect that 
sentiment, and your ambitious leaders will be 
reduced to the position of servants." 

At Philadelphia Mr. Lincoln was informed 
that there was a plot to assassinate him as he 
passed through Baltimore, and that he must 
reach there by an earlier train than the one ex- 
pected. He said that he had two public engage- 
ments in Philadelphia, and that he should meet 
these if it cost him his life. The first was rais- 
ing a new flag over Independence Hall. It was a 
sacred act to him to speak a few words in the 
very room in which the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence had been signed, and then to draw 
up with his own hands the stars and stripes 
until they floated over the hall of liberty. Then 
he went on that night through Baltimore, in- 
stead of the following morning as had been pub- 
licly announced ; and arrived safely in "Washing- 
ton. History has shown that there was no doubt 
as to the plot against him; it was so well known 
that the son of Mr. Seward, the new secretary, 



198 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

came in person to Philadelphia to tell Mr. Lin- 
coln. 

The whole country, North and South, waited 
eagerly for the inaugural address. On the 
morning of the Fourth of March, President Bu- 
chanan, the out-going President, as the custom 
was and still is, called in his carriage to escort 
to the Capitol Abraham Lincoln, who was then 
to be made President in his place. And although 
it had been said over and over again that he 
should never be allowed to live to be President, 
there he stood reading his inaugural and beside 
him stood Mr. Douglas, his defeated rival for 
the Presidency, holding the new President's hat 
with the greatest courtesy. And it should be 
remembered that Mr. Douglas during the re- 
mainder of his life was most true to the Union 
and did all in his power to aid Mr. Lincoln in 
defending it. So that the two became good 
friends. 

The inaugural stated the whole case so clear- 
ly, declared so plainly the intention of the Re- 
publican party not to interfere with slavery 
where it then existed, and was so kind and re- 
spectful in tone towards the South that the 
Southern papers were afraid it would make 
their people take a "sober second thought," and 
they said untrue things against it. After show- 
ing the disadvantages of disunion and saying 



WHAT THE PRESIDENT HAD TO FACE. 199 

many wise things, he finished by warning the 
secessionists that the burden of this act would be 
upon them. He said: "In your hands, my dis- 
satisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is 
the momentous issue of civil war. The govern- 
ment will not assail you. You can have no con- 
flict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in Heaven to de- 
stroy the government; while I have the most 
solemn one to 'preserve, protect and defend' 
it." 

This meant that if there was to be a war, 
the South would have to begin it. There stood 
the President; and the North was with him. 



XXVI. 

Firing on the Flag. 

When Mr. Lincoln was reading his inaugural 
address to the people, a man standing in a door- 
way of the Capitol was watching him with a 
scornful expression as he listened. This was 
Senator Wigfall from Texas. He knew how 
the plans of the Southerners had been made; 
how even then troops were ready to take posses- 
sion of the Territory of New Mexico; how a 
conspiracy in California hoped to bring in that 
State for the South; how in New York City 
there were men who felt that before long they 
could win this to the South as an "independent 
city"; how Maryland had thousands of her 
population longing to join the other Southern 
States ; how, soon, they would capture the North, 
which was much too busy buying and selling 
ever to dream of fighting them, even if they had 
not so many friends among the Northerners; 
how after this, the South would take posses- 
sion of Cuba and the rest of the West Indies, 
200 



FIRING ON THE FLAG. 201 

and Mexico — all these they would have and 
would form a mighty slave empire on this conti- 
nent; there was nothing to resist them. And 
over this vast empire Mr. Wigfall and his 
friends were to rule as absolutely as they ruled 
over their slaves and the poor, whites at the 
South, and some— not all— of the Democratic 
party at the North. To Mr. Wigfall listening 
scornfully in the doorway of the national Cap- 
itol, the matter was entirely settled, and the 
Southern Confederacy a resistless success. 

He lived to see something far different. For 
by the mercy of God, the United States, found- 
ed in toil and prayer and battle, were not des- 
tined to be slave, but to be free; and Abraham 
Lincoln had been made President. 

All through that March the North was unde- 
fended, entirely so at first, but more guarded 
as the days went by. The soldiers, the officers, 
the arms, the cannon, were principally at the 
South, seized from government arsenals and 
stations, or sent there from the North by some 
of the officers of President Buchanan's cabinet. 

Still, Abraham Lincoln waited and waited as 
the days went by. He was keeping to the letter 
his promise to the South made in his inaugural : 
"The government will not assail you. You can 
have no conflict without being yourselves the 
aggressors." And while he waited he was sav- 



202 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ing his time and gaining strength; he was 
silently getting ready for the struggle that he 
feared must come; and the North, holding its 
breath in the waiting and watching the Presi- 
dent, saw that he was doing his very best to 
keep peace with the South and to give it an 
opportunity to take that sober second thought 
and return to the Union. So, he waited, and 
made ready. If a very great matter may be 
likened to a small one, his attitude was what it 
had been in the old days at New Salem when 
he told Jack Armstrong and his wild boys of 
Clary's Grove that he did not want to fight, and 
stood off and tried to pacify them until they 
attacked him. Then he roused and showed his 
giant strength. 

The South waited also. But while it waited, it 
grew all the time weaker and weaker. The truth 
was that it had really no grievances to fight 
for ; nothing was the matter except that its lead- 
ers wanted the power all the time, and the elec- 
tion had shown that the other party was to have 
its turn at that; that slavery was to stay within 
its present limitations and be protected thereby 
the government, not molested in any way, but 
not permitted to stride over the whole land. 
The Southern leaders knew that there were 
many persons in the South who would be only 
too glad to remain in the Union, if they could, 



FIRING ON THE FLAG. 203 

but who were being held down so that they 
could not speak but at peril of their lives. 

These leaders perceived that every day that 
nothing happened, every day that the Federal 
government held off and let them alone, these 
secret Unionists thought better of the govern- 
ment; that after a time they would gather 
strength to say so; and that something must 
be done speedily to unite the whole South as 
one man against the North. 

They saw that while they waited, they lost 
time. If they did not use the army they had col- 
lected, it would melt away; if they did not strike 
a blow to show that the Southern Confederacy 
was something more than a convention, it would 
go to pieces of itself. They had hoped that, 
after all, they could force Abraham Lincoln to 
strike first in the name of the government. 
They had not become very well acquainted with 
him then. 

It has been said that some of the forts at the 
South had fallen into the hands of the Con- 
federacy—those on the Texan frontier, and 
those in Pensacola Bay, and others. But in 
the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, the 
forts, Pinckney, Moultrie and Sumter had still 
stood garrisoned by the United States troops 
when South Carolina seceded. And when Lin- 
coln was inaugurated, more than two months 



204 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

later, although the other two forts had been 
abandoned because Buchanan could not protect 
and properly garrison and supply them with 
food and ammunition, the stars and stripes still 
floated over Fort Sumter guarded by that loyal 
officer, Major Robert Anderson. 

But the confederates blockaded it so thor- 
oughly that no help could get to it. When Major 
Anderson sent word to the President that the 
troops had food for only a few days longer, 
Mr. Lincoln sent a message to the Governor of 
South Carolina that an attempt would be made 
"to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only," 
and that if the attempt was not resisted, no pro- 
visions, or arms, or ammunition would be 
thrown in without giving notice, or unless the 
fort were attacked. 

The relief expedition started. But it never 
got in. And the confederate authorities decided 
that this attempt to carry food to a starving 
garrison was "a declaration of war." 

April 12th, 1861, the first gun was fired 
against Fort Sumter; and then the batteries all 
about the fort opened a vigorous cannonade. 

Major Anderson endured this as long as he 
could; and then he and his seventy men sadly 
hauled down the stars and stripes and surren- 
dered to General Beauregard and his seven 
thousand armed confederates. 



XXVII. 

How the North Responded. 

The people of the North were not familiar 
with military tactics. They had not understood 
that the blockade of Fort Sumter was in itself 
war. They were still dreaming of compromise 
and peace, although the political sky was black 
with storm. 

But in every city and town and village and 
little hamlet and far-away house, and in every 
room of every house, and in every heart 
throughout the length and breadth of the North 
was heard the boom of that cannon at Sum- 
ter firing upon our flag. 

And at the sound of that cannon the North 
rose up, flung away all thought of question or 
compromise, and stood forth in its wrath— a 
giant. 

Much, much had it endured, and would have 
endured for peace and brotherhood. But to 
fire on the flag! That was war! 

Then men forgot whether they were Repub- 

205 



206 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

licans, or Democrats. They remembered only 
that they were Americans; that they had a 
country to save and must save it; and that 
death would be better than to have their flag 
trailed in the dust. Some Englishman who had 
been visiting this country a few years previous- 
ly had said that we were a nation of soldiers. 
The guns of Sumter proved the truth of his 
prophecy. In a day, as it were, an army of 
patriots had sprung up to the defence of their 
country. 

For directly after Fort Sumter was taken, the 
States of North Carolina, Arkansas, and Vir- 
ginia went out of the Union and joined the 
Southern Confederacy. Until this time Virginia 
had been between the confederates and Wash- 
ington. But now that it had itself become dis- 
unionist, it was a threat instead of a protection 
tc the national capital, while if Maryland had 
not actually joined the South, so many of her 
people wanted to do it that she also was a 
menace rather than a safeguard to the govern- 
ment; and the government meant the country. 

There was only one thing to do in this great 
emergency, and Mr. Lincoln did it promptly. 
Sumter fell on the fourteenth of April, 1861. 
That was Sunday. That very day by mail and 
telegraph there started over the country the 
President's first proclamation calling for 



HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 207 

troops. It was dated Monday, April 15. In 
this proclamation lie called forth "the militia 
of the several States of the Union, to the ag- 
gregate number of seventy-five thousand." This 
was to suppress the "combinations" of the dif- 
ferent States against the Union, "and to cause 
the laws to be duly executed." 

He called for this militia for only ninety days. 
In the same proclamation he summoned an 
extra session of Congress for the following 
"fourth day of July, then and there to consider 
and determine such measures as in their wisdom 
the public safety and interest may seem to de- 
mand." 

So, all the North awoke to the war that was 
to be for ninety days. The preachers preached ; 
the orators declaimed ; the poets sang ; the gov- 
ernors of the different States issued proclama- 
tions and made ready; hammers clanged and 
anvils rang, and arms were to be forged, and 
arsenals opened their doors to furnish weapons 
for the soldiers who were marching to the de- 
fence of their country, marching to defend the 
Union; all the land was in the bustle of pre- 
paration for this war, the end of which we were 
to see in ninety days— that is, if in that time 
the Southern confederacy would yield to per- 
suasion, or force, and give up its war against 
the government 



208 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

But a dozen times ninety days was not to see 
the end of this war. 

Men crowded about the recruiting offices and 
enlisted. They wanted to rush to the front. The 
first regiment to get to Washington came from 
the Pennsylvania militia. It was not half 
armed, but at least it arrived, to finish prepara- 
tions there. It went through Baltimore so 
suddenly that the people there who were ready 
to take part with the South had no chance to 
block its passage. But they were all ready 
directly afterward. For, April seventeenth, the 
Massachusetts Sixth Regiment, all armed and 
equipped, had started for Washington. On the 
eighteenth it marched down Broadway, New 
York, singing as it went, while thousands in the 
streets watched it: 

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, 
His soul goes marching on ! " 

The next day the New Y r ork Seventh Regiment 
set out for the capital of the nation. 

But on the nineteenth of April— the anniver- 
sary of the battle of Lexington— the Massachu- 
setts troops were attacked by a mob in Balti- 
more, and fired upon, and some of them killed. 
The soldiers kept their discipline and fired only 
when compelled to defend themselves. That 
night the secession mob of Baltimore and others 



HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 209 

in the State cut the telegraph wires and burned 
the nearest bridges from the free States into 
Baltimore, so that no more troops should go 
through in aid of the government; the feel- 
ing was so strong that the State was almost car- 
ried into secession; and if the mob had had a 
leader equal in ability to its desires, the seces- 
sionists in Maryland would have shut in Wash- 
ington between themselves and the confederates 
at the South and captured it before the other 
regiments could have arrived. This was what 
Jefferson Davis had arranged with the people 
of Maryland to do. For a time Washington was 
in great danger. 

But Lincoln did not lose his head. He brought 
in the other regiments a different way, in spite 
of the Governor of Maryland; and soon the 
Union forces had come in. So, the stars and 
bars never floated over Washington, as the 
confederates had expected at that time, and so 
often threatened afterward. 

All this did not make the North less swift in 
sending men to protect and defend our country. 
But one of Mr. Lincoln's great difficulties was 
to know who was loyal to the Union. About a 
week after the taking of Fort Sumter he spoke 
to Colonel Robert E. Lee, a West Point officer, 
in regard to his taking command of the Union 
army. Colonel Lee, however, was a Virginian 



/ 



210 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

and was waiting to see how his State went. 
When he found that Virginia had seceded, he 
resigned his place in the United States army 
that same day, and within a week was given 
command of the Virginia State army, and soon 
afterward was made general of the confederate 
army. 

But General Scott, another Virginian, was 
loyal and he helped the President as much as 
he could ; and soon the forts around Washington 
were manned and in order. Maryland did not 
secede, as we know, although it came so near it ; 
and after a time the loyal people in it gained 
the power and the State remained for the Union 
throughout the war. 

Mr. Lincoln had been in the Black Hawk war, 
one of the volunteer militia. He understood 
that, however brave and willing ninety days' 
men may be, they are ready to go home when 
their time is up; and he speedily realized that 
a longer time would be needed to make these 
recruits into the soldiers that this conflict would 
require. So he sent out word through the war 
department that over forty thousand of the men 
who all over the country were volunteering for 
the army would be accepted for three years, 
or during the war. And at the same time he 
called for seamen. In this way he had an army 



HOW THE NORTH RESPONDED. 211 

and a navy to stand by him when the ninety 
days' militia should go home. 

It may be that that old history of Washington 
which he had borrowed when a boy and had let 
get wet in the storm and so had to work so hard 
to pay for, helped him now. For Stoddard tells 
us that he remembered how Washington had 
been hampered in his work, and at times almost 
defeated in his efforts, through his soldiers' time 
of enlistment being out just when he needed 
them most. Lincoln determined to be provided 
against this danger. 

So, daily, hourly, by constant study and 
watchfulness, by learning from all who could 
tell him, and then using his own best judgment 
in action, Abraham Lincoln labored to guide 
into peace and safety again the nation which 
had chosen him for its leader and head. 



XXVIII. 

The Battle of Bull Run, 

A great many important things in a military 
sense were done in the latter part of April. 
Washington was made safe for that time; Fort- 
ress Monroe, that commands the "water gate- 
way of Virginia," was reinforced and held; the 
government works at Harper's Ferry were 
blown up and burned to save them from the 
confederate troops; the city of Cairo, Illinois, 
at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi 
Rivers, was held by government forces; and the 
blockade of the Southern States by water which 
Mr. Lincoln had ordered was extended to Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina; and different mili- 
tary departments were formed under the charge 
of different generals. 

It was of as great importance to the govern- 
ment to keep the border States out of the con- 
federacy as it was to the South to have them 
join it; the Southern leaders were all the time 
pressing and forcing upon them the decision to 
212 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 213 

secede, and Mr. Lincoln was all the time holding 
back from everything which would give them 
even an excuse for going over to the confed- 
eracy. The matter of the "long bridge" is 
one instance of how careful he was not to do 
anything which a border State could resent. 
Washington, as we know, is so situated that in 
order to make the city really secure it was 
necessary that the government should hold some 
of the surrounding heights and places of stra- 
tegic importance across the Potomac. But these 
were on Virginian soil; therefore, so long as 
Virginia remained in the Union, although it 
was plain that her secessionists were going to 
drag her out, the heights yet remained un- 
touched by the Federal government. It kept 
a small guard at the bridge, it was true, to pre- 
vent its being destroyed ; but nobody interfered 
with travel or merchandise going across it; and 
when a stray secessionist from Maryland want- 
ed to go South to join the confederate army, no- 
body hindered him. And it is said that after 
nightfall the squad of Union soldiers in charge 
there went across and "hobnobbed" with the 
Virginia State militia posted on the other side 
and their officers said very little about it. Just 
as long as it was possible to forbear, Mr. Lin- 
coln did it. 
In addition to all that was to be done here, it 



214 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

was necessary to make the government right 
with the nations of Europe, some of whom were 
much interested in the Southern confederacy. 
For Jefferson Davis had early sent over repre- 
sentatives to induce them to recognize and ap- 
prove of the "Confederate States of America"; 
and if they had done so, it would have been much 
harder for the government. But Mr. Lincoln 
knew they would do it unless he prevented it. 
He said in effect that this was a family quarrel 
and that foreign nations had nothing to do with 
it. The details of this statement he left to Sec- 
retary Seward, who was well versed in diplo- 
macy and knew how to manage the matter with 
skill and success. 

Meanwhile the North had sent forth its men 
by the thousands, the hundred thousand, for 
soldiers and sailors; and the people could not 
imagine why Mr. Lincoln did not take hold with 
them and conquer the confederacy straightway? 
Why was he so slow? They thought they saw 
everything. But, really, they saw at the time but 
little of the difficulties and dangers in the way. 
They could not even realize — for they knew 
only in a general way at the time— how the 
government found secret enemies at every turn, 
in army and navy and in the different depart- 
ments of the administration. At that time to 
find out anything that "Lincoln" proposed to 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 215 

do and to tell it to the confederates was held a 
fine thing by certain persons. 

April twenty -ninth Jefferson Davis assembled 
the confederate Congress at Montgomery, and 
made a long and public statement of the wrongs 
of the South which he published to the world. 
It was full of untruths carefully put. But after 
declaring all the preparations for war and for 
maintaining the Southern confederacy, he add- 
ed one more word which was certainly true and 
became a byword at the North through the war. 
For: "All we want," said Mr. Jefferson Davis, 
"is to be let alone." 

The speeches of the Southern leaders aggra- 
vated the North. Mr. Jefferson Davis said 
openly that the North, and not the South, should 
be the field of war. And Floyd, who had stolen 
all he could of government property while he 
was secretary of war under Buchanan, prophe- 
sied that the stars and bars, the flag of the con- 
federacy, would float over the dome of the old 
capitol at Washington before May first, 1861, 
and that it ' ' might float eventually over Fanueil 
Hall itself." So little did the people of the 
South understand the North. 

It has been said that directly after the fall 
of Sumter the Legislature of Virginia voted 
the State out of the Union. But this vote had 
to go to the people of the State to be confirmed. 



216 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

A few days afterward Jefferson Davis trans- 
ferred the seat of his government to Richmond. 
So, the leaders and plenty of troops were on 
hand there. May twenty-third the vote was 
taken. By sunset that same day, within an 
hour of the time that Lincoln learned that Vir- 
ginia had seceded, regiments of Union troops 
were marching across the long bridge, and by 
daylight every position of defence desired had 
been seized by the government. And early 
that same day regiments were at work with 
pick and spade throwing up fortifications. 
For, as we know, the great battle-ground of the 
war was not the North, but the South. Up and 
down, and back and forth, over and over in 
different States, but especially in Virginia, the 
armies marched, and entrenched, and fought 
for four terrible years. 

There never was a more remarkable army 
than that which answered the call of President 
Lincoln. Never were twenty millions of people 
more full of zeal and enthusiasm for the cause 
for which their soldiers were to fight ; and never 
were soldiers themselves more deeply interested 
in the cause for which they were to fight. It 
was no wonder ; the spirit of the war was every- 
where. In all the cities and towns; not only in 
public halls and at war meetings ; but in all the 
workshops and factories, in all the homes, yes, 



1 




Copyright, 19<">. t'V >K'*:iur..', Phillips & Co. 

PRESIDENT LINCOLN AND HIS SON THOMAS ("TAD"). 
From a photograph. 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 217 

and even by the school boys and girls, the war 
was talked over. And around the doors of the 
homes of the foreign population groups would 
be collected, one reading the newspaper and 
the others listening to what was doing in the 
army. 

The army was made up of men of every rank 
from the sons of millionaires to day laborers. 
In it were skilled mechanics of every descrip- 
tion. When on their march they found rail- 
roads torn up, or bridges burned, or when any- 
thing went wrong, there was always somebody 
among the soldiers who knew how these things 
were to be repaired and who could step out from 
the ranks and help to do it. There is a story 
of a day when one of the Union generals needed 
badly to use an engine to transport some of his 
troops. But the engine had been put out of 
order by the confederates. One man came for- 
ward and said he thought he " could fix it." 
"What makes you think you can fix itf" asked 
his general. "Because I made it," returned the 
man. And he did "fix" it. 

But one thing this army did not know at the 
beginning of the conflict ; and that was the rules 
and manoeuvres of war. They were not used to 
fighting, and this takes training as truly as 
baseball and football and boat-racing and other 
games need training, and a great deal more of 



218 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

it. These men were, really, not as well prepared 
as the minute men in the Eevolutionary war, 
because those had been trained in Indian wars 
and in hunting and had had more practice in the 
use of weapons. In case of fire in a school- 
house we know what the difference is between 
the very same children when they have had no 
practice and when they have been well trained 
in the fire-drill. If they have, they will go out 
of the house in perfect order and nobody is 
hurt, or even frightened. But if not, there will 
be a terrible rush and crowding and danger. 
Yet, in both cases the children will be the same 
children. That was a good deal the difference 
between our army at first, and later. Then, as 
it has been said before, the greater part of the 
officers trained by the government to fight for 
it in times of danger had been Southerners and 
had gone with their States; while many Union 
officers were untrained in war. All this made a 
vast difference at the Battle of Bull Eun. 

There is not time to tell of the things that 
came to pass before those July days on which 
the battle was fought. Only, this was true, that' 
some of the generals were very stupid or dis- 
loyal in carrying out the spirit of their orders, 
and General Johnston, the confederate general 
who should have been intercepted by the Union 
forces, was allowed to join General Beauregard, 



THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 219 

and this made up largely the force that won the 
battle at Bull Run. For at Bull Run, in Vir- 
ginia, the Union forces had been ordered to 
meet the confederates in battle. The battle was 
not opened at the time arranged for; the Union 
officers did not know how to deploy their troops 
skilfully and the confederates attacked the army 
instead of its being the other way, and in a place 
particularly unfortunate. 

There was a great deal of hard fighting on 
both sides ; but after the battle had raged nearly 
two days a panic seized the Union forces, such 
as sometimes seizes the best-trained soldiers, 
and they broke and ran away, until at last 
they all gathered in Washington — those who 
were left of them, and the great army upon 
which the country had depended for victory 
was too disorganized even for defence. Had the 
confederates followed up hard, they could have 
captured Washington in that first wild alarm. 
Congress was in extra session during this bat- 
tle; and some of the congressmen had gone to 
the field of Bull Run to "see the fight," as if it 
were to be a holiday victory. One of these was 
captured; and the others came flying back with 
no desire to see any more battles. 

The South was wild with delight over its 
victory; while for a very short time the North 
was in despair over this terrible defeat. It 



220 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

seemed as if for us all was blackness, while for 
the confederacy success was near. But things 
did not prove so. The South began to feel that 
if victory was to be won so easily, there was 
no need of its trying so very hard to raise men 
and money. Then, it did not follow up the 
victory and received not much more than the 
fame of the battle. On the other hand, the 
North gathered itself together for the long, 
hard combat and put forth new strength. It 
took courage and saw that, after all, everything 
was not lost. Congress voted the President 
all the men and all the money he needed at the 
time, even more money than he asked for. And 
when some of the New York bankers met and 
began to be afraid of the future value of the 
government bonds, one of them said: "If you 
let the government go down, your other securi- 
ties won't be worth much to speak of. We must 
let the President have the last cent." 

This was the spirit in which the North met 
the defeat of Bull Run, and in the end turned 
it into a victory. Just as in a man's life, many 
a defeat proves in the end a gain to him. 



XXIX. 

Some of the Union Generals. 

After the battle of Bull Run over which the 
confederates boasted so much there was a feel- 
ing in the South, as has been said, that it would 
be easy enough to conquer the "Yankees"; the 
South was then in the habit of calling all the 
Northerners — especially those who opposed it — 
"Yankees." And it was even whispered at the 
North that the men had become so discouraged 
and frightened by the Bull Run defeat, that they 
would flee at the sight of any confederate forces. 
But in October this was found to be most untrue. 
For then came the battle of Ball's Bluff, in Vir- 
ginia. Here the Union troops were badly 
handled by their officers, and although General 
McClellan was fairly near with a very large 
army, he sent no reinforcements. As a result 
the army was so badly beaten by the confeder- 
ates that almost half the men engaged were 
killed. Much as the North grieved over this 
221 



222 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

disaster, it proved beyond question that the 
troops would fight splendidly against great 
odds. The question of their courage was 
settled. It must be seen to that they had proper 
leaders. 

General Scott, who until then had been in 
charge of the army, resigned. He did not like 
the way many things were going. He said he 
was too old for the labor and responsibility. 
The President appreciated so much his services 
and his loyalty when so many officers had 
deserted and taken sides with their different 
seceding States, that he and all his cabinet paid 
an official visit to the old General and read 
him the letter he had written to him expressing 
the regret of the President and his Cabinet 
and of the people at his impaired health, and the 
sense of the many great and important services 
which General Scott had rendered his country ; 
for Scott had also won honor in the Mexican 
war. It was like Lincoln to make General 
Scott happy by this thoughtfulness. But many 
men oppressed by harassing cares would never 
have done it. It was only another evidence that 
if a man's heart is right, he can be in the truest 
sense as much a gentleman if he was born in 
a log cabin as in a palace. 

Then he gave General McClellan the place 
that General Scott had resigned. McClellan 



SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 223 

was excellent at organizing and drilling an 
army, and great things were expected of him 
in those early days. The President did all he 
could to help him on to victory, the country 
waited on his footsteps and the army loved him ; 
he could have had laurels in plenty by reaching 
out for them. 

But many more generals were needed ; and the 
President as commander-in-chief of the army 
and navy must see that these were wisely 
chosen; he must appoint men both skilful and 
trusty, men who knew how to win victories and 
who would not do all they could to keep the 
government from defeating the confederacy 
while at the same time they were pretending to 
serve their country. There were such generals 
in the army at one time ; it was hard to discover 
them and weed them out. As the war went on a 
good many men who had been educated at the 
West Point military academy and then had left 
the army and gone into business came forward 
to offer their services to their country. Ulysses 
S. Grant was one of these ; and a command was 
given him in the West where he with other gen- 
erals and the brave men under them won vic- 
tories of great value. For these destroyed 
the plans of the confederates to carry Missouri 
and Kentucky out of the Union and gave new 
strength to the Union men there. Then, the 



224 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

army under General Sherman and the navy 
under Commodore Dupont captured Port Royal 
in South Carolina. The following year still 
more was done in Kentucky and Tennessee ; and 
New Orleans was captured and a part of the 
Mississippi River opened by the Union gun 
boats, and held. 

After the Union defeats in Virginia, the first 
year, nothing was done by the army of the 
Potomac. Poor General McClellan got into 
the Virginia mud— not being willing to fight 
during fine autumn weather when everybody 
wanted him to do it. He would not put his army 
into winter huts as the confederates did their 
soldiers; he wished to have the appearance of 
being always just about to advance; but the 
months went by and the soldiers died by the 
thousands in the swamps and the President in 
vain commanded him to go forward; he always 
had some excuse. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Lincoln was laboring at his 
terrible task, with other generals besides those 
named, or any that have a place on the list of 
officers. Mr. Stoddard tells us of the great room 
where he worked "through all the days and 
half through all the nights." There was but 
little furniture in it; and this had never been 
altered since the days of President Jackson 
whose favorite chair still stood there. There 



SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 225 

were folios of maps against the walls ; volumes 
of military history came and went from the 
li 1 raries and lay about on the President's table. 
I neoln arose early and always breakfasted 
simply; he was often at work before the hum- 
blest clerk of the government had eaten his 
breakfast. "He knew," says Stoddard, "every 
river, mountain range, creek, hill, valley, on the 
broad acres through which the tides of war 
were to flow. He was better than ever ac- 
quainted with the local populations, their indus- 
tries, tendencies, origins, wealths or poverties. 
No man living was endowed with better capacity 
to digest, assimilate and use all this knowledge." 
What it was to the country that Lincoln so 
studied and informed himself cannot be told. 
He once wrote to General McClellan about some 
point on which McClellan disputed him— as he 
was very apt to do — "I ordered" (such a 
thing) "on the unanimous opinion of every mil- 
itary man I could get an opinion from, and 
every modern military hook,— yourself only 
excepted." What study that meant! 

Then, in winning the great battle for the 
Union against disunion, Mr. Lincoln had to 
unite all the forces of the North, and some of 
these were not friendly to him and were difficult 
to manage. In all these matters he had to use 
the services of those skilful generals of dis- 



226 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

cretion, carefulness, faithfulness, wisdom, un- 
selfishness, industry, ability that dwelt in his 
own head and heart. A busy time of it had the 
President bending day and night over his work 
and trying to turn all forces at his command 
into the service of his country. 

In the November of 1861, Captain Wilkes of 
our navy captured two Southerners, Messrs. 
Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade 
and were going abroad to try to get England 
and France to recognize the Southern Con- 
federacy. They had run across to Havana and 
there taken passage in a British mail steamer 
— the "Trent. " It was from this ship that Cap- 
tain Wilkes took them. There was great ado. 
The South rejoiced, because she believed that 
the English were so angry to have passengers 
taken from one of their ships that they would 
go to war. It was perhaps right that the men 
should not be detained ; but the manner in which 
they were demanded by the British minister 
proved to the Americans how much the English 
people were in favor of the South and hoped for 
their success, and how rude they could be to 
the government when they thought it had on its 
hands a war in which perhaps it could not con- 
quer. 

But this was a time when President Lincoln 
toot counsel of his wise General Discretion, 



SOME OF THE UNION GENERALS. 227 

decided that he would not have a war with Eng- 
land on our hands at the same time with the 
war with the Southern confederacy, or at all, if 
he could help it, and gave up Messrs. Mason and 
Slidell. They could not do any real harm, after 
all. For England and France did not recognize 
the confederacy then, or ever; and after the 
Union cause had won, of course they said that 
they had never thought of doing it. 



XXX. 

People Who Tried to Advise. 

Stoddard says that a President's mail is 
always large; but that Mr. Lincoln's grew so 
heavy that it was impossible that he should 
examine it himself. "Counting packages of 
documents as one 'letter,' the number of letters 
of all kinds," he says, "varied from two hun- 
dred to two hundred and fifty a day." These 
treated of all imaginable subjects. Some one 
tells a story of one of Mr. Lincoln's private sec- 
retaries who sat opening and throwing letters 
into the waste basket by dozens and scores. A 
gentleman who sat watching him grew very 
angry and asked him how he dared to destroy 
what the President himself should have an 
opportunity to read? 

"Look at those letters yourself," answered 
the secretary. 

And when the gentleman did so, his wrath 
turned against the writers. For the letters 

228 



PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 229 

were full of anger, insult, abuse and all evil 
and hateful words heaped upon the sad and 
burdened President. 

Such fault-finding and abuse as this never 
reached Mr. Lincoln. But there was much 
advice, some mixed with much criticism and 
fault-finding which he did receive. Some of 
this he paid no attention to in words, although, 
no doubt, it hurt him. And other advice came 
to him in such ways that he must notice if he 
did not follow it. For Mr. Lincoln had a mind 
of his own and followed that; and it brought 
him out right, while other people's advice would 
very possibly have landed the country in de- 
struction. It seems so strange to have persons 
who are not in a thing at all think they know 
so much more about it than those who are in 
the midst of affairs and have every means of 
knowing the truth, and of knowing the way out, 
when there is a way out of difficulties. 

It happened that those who ought to have 
known Lincoln better sometimes tried to guide 
him as they should not have done. When he 
first became President, Mr. Seward who was his 
secretary of state and a great scholar, remem- 
bered that Mr. Lincoln had not been educated 
like himself and thought that the President 
would not know at all what to say or do in 
regard to managing the representatives of Eng- 



230 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

land and France and other countries, nor know 
about many things requiring information and 
skill and ability such as a President ought to 
have. So, he offered to guide Mr. Lincoln and 
act for him in such affairs. He wrote something 
of this sort to him. Mr. Lincoln was very kind 
and noble; he never told about the letter, or 
referred to it again after he had answered Mr. 
Seward. But he said to him that such things 
were the President's business to attend to, and 
that he should do it. So Seward found out that 
Lincoln had a mind of his own and knew how to 
use it; and the two men became good and true 
friends so long as Mr. Lincoln lived — so good 
friends that when Mr. Lincoln was assassinated, 
the murderers tried to kill Mr. Seward also. 

There was an editor in Washington who was 
always rinding fault with the President and 
writing things against him. One day a friend 
said to Mr. Lincoln that if only he would invite 
that editor to call to see him and pay him a little 
attention, the man would probably be pleased 
about it, and turn around and say good things of 
him. But Abraham Lincoln answered with that 
honest pride which had won the hearts of the 
people and made them trust him. ''I never 
have done an official act for my own personal 
political power," lie said; "and I shall not do it 
now. I have not invited Horace Greeley and 



PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 231 

other editors of much more importance and pa- 
triotism than this editor to call upon me, and I 
shall not ask this one." And he did not. 

But there was one letter which Horace Gree- 
ley, then the editor of the New York Tribune, a 
leading Republican paper, wrote him a week 
after the battle of Bull Run which must have 
grieved the President much. "You are not con- 
sidered a great man, ' ' wrote Mr. Greeley. And 
then he went on to say that if Mr. Lincoln was 
sure that we could never recover from the defeat 
at Bull Run, he ought not to carry on the war 
any longer, to have more men killed, but should 
call a peace conference at once, and arrange 
with the South ; and he begged him not to think 
of himself; but to do what he thought right and 
that Greeley would help him. 

But though some men thought with Greeley 
that all was lost because of one defeat, all 
were not so; the faith of the people swept 
back in a great tide of loyalty. Congress was 
true ; men came into the army to more than fill 
the places of those lost; the Governors of the 
States offered troops and hurried them forward 
to Washington. In it all the President was calm 
in speech and manner, however his heart ached ; 
and he began to show his great ability in admin- 
istrating affairs, which, it was said of him 
"enabled him to smooth mountains of obstacles 



232 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

and bridge rivers of difficulty in his control of 
men." On the night after the battle of Bull 
Run he began to plan out what next the army 
should do, and when people came to him with 
their advice and their plans, he was all ready to 
tell them a story and send them away, not letting 
them know at all what was in his own mind, for 
that would have spoiled all. 

There was once a temperance committee which 
waited on the President and told him that the 
reason the army of the Potomac did not win vic- 
tories was because the soldiers drank so much 
whisky that the Lord would not allow them to 
be successful. Now, nobody hated intoxicating 
drink of all kinds more than Mr. Lincoln. But 
he could not help saying to this committee which 
came to advise him, that it seemed strange if 
their belief was true, because the confederate 
army drank a great deal more whisky than the 
Northern did. 

If he could call people's attention to any fact 
he wanted them to notice, he never sought 
around for fine words; this is the reason his 
speeches and letters are so forceful and so 
admired. One day a man who knew him very 
well came to him and begged him not to use 
the word "sugar-coated" in some message he 
was sending. "If you think there's any 
doubt about their knowing what 'sugar-coated' 



PEOPLE WHO TRIED TO ADVISE. 233 

means," returned Mr. Lincoln, "I will change 
it." But as there could not be, he let it stand. 

He was worn and tired with the great numbers 
of persons always coming to see him. Yet he 
was impatient of any measures taken to keep 
the people away from him; he wanted them to 
have the opportunity to come freely as he 
believed the people ought to be able to come to 
their President. So, he answered them as best 
he could, granted their requests when he be- 
lieved it possible, and sent them away with 
stories when he could do no more for them. 



XXXI. 

General Lee Comes into Maryland. 

One day when President Lincoln and some of 
his generals had arranged to meet General 
McClellan and he kept them waiting for him a 
long time and then never came at all, when the 
generals were angry for this insult to the Presi- 
dent whom McClellan often treated rudely, Mr. 
Lincoln said to them: "Why, I would hold his 
horses for him if he would only give us vic- 
tory!" 

General McClellan had been put in command 
of the great army of the Potomac after General 
Scott resigned his position as commanding gen- 
eral in the October of 1861; but he was prac- 
tically in command from almost directly after 
the battle of Bull Eun on the July before, until 
the seventh of November, 1862, when he was 
finally relieved of his command. In that time 
there had been a brief interval when without 
being definitely superseded, the command of an 

234 



GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 235 

army called the army of Virginia instead of that 
of the Potomac had been given to other generals. 
This was because McClellan either could not or 
would not attack the confederates when he had 
a splendid army under his command and the 
whole country was waiting and wondering at 
his delay and asking why he did not do some- 
thing, and the President was sending him word 
over and over and over that he must get after 
the enemy ''by some route;" for McClellan 
always objected to whatever Mr. Lincoln sug- 
gested. He did drill the army into good order 
and discipline; but he never did anything with 
it like what it was reasonable to expect from a 
splendid army like the army of the Potomac. 
Mr. Lincoln said of him that he was "an admir- 
able engineer," but he seemed "to have a 
special talent for a stationary engine." He was 
always so afraid of doing something "to bring 
on a general engagement," — as if that was not 
what everybody else wanted ! 

How many times the President ordered him to 
start on his campaign could not be told. But 
as some one said: " McClellan 's capacity for 
waiting a little longer was marvellous." At 
last, however, he did set forward for what the 
President and the country hoped was Richmond. 
But instead he went to Yorktown without deci- 
sive result. 



236 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

There had been fighting, though, that season 
and terrible battles, "Seven Pines," "Fair 
Oaks," "Mechanicsville," "Malvern Hill," and 
smaller engagements. So many men had been 
wounded and killed, or died of illness, and noth- 
ing had been done for the government. Indeed, 
it was the greatest advantage to the confeder- 
ates that McClellan did nothing for so long; it 
gave them a fine opportunity to get ready. 

At last the President and the country had had 
enough of this thing. In spite of the battles, 
some won, some lost, the campaign of the Penin- 
sula had been a great failure. McClellan was 
ordered to come back from Yorktown, and gen- 
eral command of the armies was given to Gen- 
eral Halleck who had been doing good work out 
West; so that for a time General McClellan 
was under him. Then also Mr. Lincoln made 
an army of Virginia and put General Pope in 
command of this. So that in the summer of 
1862 McClellan although he was not put out of 
his command had to stand aside for awhile and 
let somebody else try to work, and to help all he 
could. 

But did he help? General Halleck kept send- 
ing for him to return; but he would not start 
until he got ready and that was too late to be 
of service. Some of his officers also cared more 
to injure other generals than to save their coun- 



GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 237 

try. General Pope intercepted a letter from 
General Lee to another confederate general say- 
ing that he (Lee) intended to get between 
General Pope and Washington and destroy him 
in a great battle and then march into Maryland. 
Now was the time for McClellan to send Pope 
reinforcements from his army of the Potomac, 
so that Pope might win a great victory. Instead 
of this, one of McClellan 's friends and generals 
heard the guns of Pope's army all the day of the 
battle and never sent him any help. Pope was 
brave and the soldiers fought splendidly. He 
had reason to expect that forty or fifty thousand 
men from the army of the Potomac would reach 
him in time for the battle, and he made his 
arrangements accordingly. About seven thou- 
sand came to him instead. The whole Virginia 
army of the confederates was upon him. It was 
no wonder that his plans went wrong and he was 
defeated at the battle of Manassas, commonly 
called the second Bull Run, and at Gaines' Mills, 
and had to retreat, and afterward to resign his 
command. 

At that time there was nothing for Mr. Lin- 
coln to do but give the command again to Gen- 
eral McClellan, and let him have another chance, 
and a splendid chance, to make his name and 
fame by a great victory, so that the country 
would forget how slow he had been and would 



238 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

only rejoice that, at last, he had, as we say, "got 
there." For this was the time that the Poet 
Whittier tells us of in his poem, "Barbara 
Frietchie": 

"On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the mountain- wall, — 

"Over the mountains winding down, 
Horse and foot into Frederick town. 

When 

"Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead." 

Here was Lee with his army in Maryland. 
He thought that he had come to stay, or to march 
still further into the Northern States. General 
Lee issued a proclamation to the people of Mary- 
land that he had come to free them from their 
bondage to the Union. But all the men who 
had wanted to join the confederate army had 
gone over the Potomac long before, and only two 
or three hundred enlisted in Lee's army. 

General McClellan followed up Lee, and 
although it was thought that with better manage- 
ment he might have fought the army while it 
was divided, and really "smashed" it, yet he 
actually did come to a battle at Antietam. It 
was a terrible battle, too, fought desperately on 
both sides. This battle followed the Union vic- 
tory of South Mountain, where McClellan did 



GENERAL LEE COMES INTO MARYLAND. 230 

not pursue vigorously. Antietam was fought 
September seventeenth, 1862. It was not well 
managed ; but it was splendidly fought on both 
sides, as has been said. Each side claimed the 
victory; to General Lee it was "a drawn bat- 
tle" where it should have been an absolute de- 
feat. But it was so "drawn" that he had to 
go back into Virginia again and give up his 
attempt upon the North for that time. 

As General McClellan did not follow up Gen- 
eral Lee, the President decided to appoint a 
new commander — Ambrose E. Burnside. Gen- 
eral Burnside did not want to take command of 
the army ; he was afraid he did not know enough 
of generalship. And although he was very loyal 
and brave, it seemed true. For in December 
came the terrible defeat of Fredericksburg. In 
this battle both sides had very many brave sol- 
diers killed and wounded. And so the year 1862 
came to an end sadly for the country. 



xxxn. 

Congress and Slavery. 

In the winter of 1861-2, while the army of the 
Potomac was still under the command of Gen- 
eral McClellan, some members of the famous 
Hutchinson family of singers who in those days 
were widely known in New England came to 
Washington, and asked the secretary of war to 
permit them to visit the camps across the Poto- 
mac and sing to the soldiers. Secretary Cam- 
eron was delighted, for their songs were simple 
and beautiful; he not only allowed them to go, 
but he commended them. So, McClellan gave 
his permission to have them sing. Delighted 
crowds of soldiers gathered about wherever the 
singers went ; for the songs brought the best and 
dearest thoughts of their own homes back to 
them. But an officer passing near caught a 
word that sounded like "abolition." That 
would never do. There was a small tempest 
among those to whom this was reported until 

240 



. 



•,. 



H 




Ul 







1 * 





('"pjn.-ht, 19m, bj M.M'lure, Pb 



THE PRESIDENT VISITS CAMP. 



CONGRESS AND SLAVERY. 241 

news reached McClellan himself. For the Hut- 
chinsons were singing that most stirring and 
beautiful hymn written by the Poet Whittier 
"In War Time," a translation of Luther's 
Hymn, meaning "A Mighty Fortress is our 
God. ' ' It was a song for men to hear when none 
knew how soon they might be called to give up 
their lives for their country. 

"In vain the bells of war shall ring 
Of triumphs and revenges, 
While still is spared the evil thing 
That severs and estranges. 
But blest the ear 
That yet shall hear 
The jubilant bell 
That rings the knell 
Of Slavery forever!" 

As soon as he heard of it, McClellan issued an 
order forbidding the Hutchinsons to sing to the 
troops and sending the singers back across the 
Potomac. For General McClellan had an- 
nounced to the people of Virginia what amount- 
ed to a promise to send back to them any slaves 
who should escape into the Union lines. This 
treatment of the Hutchinson family shows how 
many of the commanders felt in regard to 
slavery. But they could not keep the soldiers 
from that strange song which came from no- 



242 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOB BOYS. 

body knows where and was a favorite in the 
army for so long: 

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, 
His soul is marching on ! " 

This was a hidden threat against slavery 
whether the soldiers understood it or not. 

But all generals did not agree with McClellan. 
General Butler at first thought the same. But 
when he was in command at Fortress Monroe, 
three negro slaves came within the Union lines 
from the confederate army near by. They said 
they were the property of a confederate colonel 
who was going to send them to North Carolina 
to work on confederate fortifications there. The 
owner sent word to Butler to return them to 
him. But General Butler thought tha.t if the ne- 
groes were going to be set to work on fortifica- 
tions, it would be better to set them to work on 
his own. He could not see why we should send 
men, black or white, to help build confederate 
fortifications behind which the Union soldiers 
could be shot down. If the negroes were going 
to do any digging or work of any kind, they 
ought to do it for him. He did not discuss sla- 
very at all ; he took the colored men just as he 
would have taken horses or mules or powder 
and shot, or food, or fodder for cattle, or the 
cattle themselves, or anything, no matter what 



CONGRESS AND SLAVERY. 243 

it was, that could help the confederates and 
make them stronger. In all war this is fair and 
is always done, and it is called " contraband of 
war." So, General Butler informed the Colonel 
that he should not return the slaves ; and he kept 
them to help build fortifications and do what 
else they could; and he called them and other 
slaves that came into our lines "contraband of 
war." 

The term was caught up instantly all over 
the country; and the newspapers and the people 
laughed over the cleverness of this lawyer gen- 
eral and saw the point at once. Why should 
Union men dig in the ditches and send back the 
slaves to do the confederates' digging for them? 
Why should the government try to save the con- 
federates at the cost of its own soldiers, since 
everything that helped these confederates hurt 
its own men? 

And Congress took up the matter after a 
time. 

But first it passed a bill declaring slavery 
abolished in the District of Columbia, and the 
President signed this April sixteenth, 1862. Mr. 
Lincoln as he signed it said: "Little did I 
dream in 1849 when I proposed to abolish slav- 
ery at this capital, and could scarcely get a 
hearing for the proposition, that it would be so 
soon accomplished." 



244 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

On the nineteenth of June, 1862, Congress 
passed a bill forbidding slavery forever in all 
the Territories of the United States then exist- 
ing, or that might hereafter be acquired. 

March thirteenth, 1862, President Lincoln 
signed a bill passed by Congress forbidding 
officers and soldiers in the army and navy from 
returning fugitive slaves. And July sixteenth, 
1862, Mr. Lincoln signed a law passed by Con- 
gress declaring that all slaves of persons in 
arms against the government or aiding the con- 
federacy escaping from such persons and taking 
refuge within Union army lines, and all slaves 
captured from such persons or deserted by 
them, and coming under control of the govern- 
ment, or slaves found in a place where the con- 
federate army had been and the Union army 
came, should be considered " captives of war, 
and shall be forever free of their servitude and 
not again held as slaves." 

If good Union men in confederate States or 
in the border States remaining in the Union lost 
their slaves, the government was to pay them 
for these. But this law came later. 

At the beginning of the war when General 
Fremont, given command in Missouri, had 
issued a proclamation freeing the blacks of the 
confederates whom he was fighting, Mr. Lincoln 
had forbidden it because the time had not then 



CONGRESS AND SLAVERY. 245 

come. But in 1862 when the slaves had been 
freed at Washington and the war was going on, 
with men always needed to fill up the army, the 
question of arming the blacks to fight for their 
own freedom and help the Union as soldiers, 
was discussed. The right to do this became a 
law, on the seventeenth of July, 1862. 

But this was not all. The rest which was 
so much needed was coming, not too soon, but at 
the time when it must come, the time that Abra- 
ham Lincoln had been waiting for with his wise 
patience, when the people were ready, too, and 
waiting, and when emancipation— freedom for 
the colored race— would unite the North and not 
divide it. At last he spoke; and the world 
heard. 



XXXIII. 

The Emancipation Proclamation. 

While all this discussion about slavery was 
going on, and Congress was passing laws as to 
what should be done with the slaves, and Abra- 
ham Lincoln with all the powers of his great 
mind and all the earnestness of his great heart 
and all the prayers of his soul that trusted in 
God for guidance, was laboring over the ques- 
tion as to what he was to do for them— what 
were the slaves doing for themselves? How 
were they behaving? The South had always been 
in terror lest they should rise and murder their 
masters and seize upon freedom with hands red 
with the blood of the white men? It had 
watched all travelers, for fear that these should 
bring suggestions to the slaves; it had forbid- 
den teaching of all kind for the colored people — 
all for fear of what might happen. 

And when the war came, what did happen? 

246 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 247 

Did the negroes rise against their masters ? Not 
at all. The worst thing they did was to run 
away from them ; or, sometimes, it was the mas- 
ters who ran away and left the colored people 
they had owned to do as they pleased. And 
many and many a time, instead of cruelty to 
their old masters when these grew poor and 
helpless in the war, the former slaves were full 
of loyalty and goodness to them. 

But there was one thing the slaves all wanted 
— to be free. And not the wisest man in America 
knew so surely from the very beginning that the 
war was going to make them free as these ignor- 
ant black men and women knew it. 

As soldiers in the Union army they fought 
well and bravely side by side with other soldiers 
who were trying to save the Union. But ex- 
cept as soldiers under discipline, they were 
peaceable; they waited for the liberty which 
was certainly coming to them. The spirit of 
faith and prayer in which they waited Whittier 
has told us in his "At Port Royal" where the 
negro boatmen, freed by the coming of the 
Union troops, row and sing: 

"We pray de Lord ; He gib us signs 
Dat some day we be free ; 
De norf-wind tell it to de pines, 
De wild-duck to de sea." 



248 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

This was months before Abraham Lincoln's 
Emancipation Proclamation. But from the first 
the faith of the colored people in "Massa Lin- 
kum" was perfect and unbounded. Others 
feared and hoped and watched ; but these people 
knew. It seemed as if the God they loved had 
whispered in wind and wave and bird the 
prophecy of liberty to them. 

We should remember, too, that if the govern- 
ment helped the slaves to freedom, they most 
surely helped it to victory. If slavery had con- 
tinued, we should have had no united country 
today. For the cause of separation would have 
still separated North and South, unless we had 
been as Lincoln said years before the war, all 
slaveholding, North and South. But before the 
end of the war between one and two hundred 
thousand colored men were in our army. 

And then the negroes not only fought in the 
Union army; they helped the government in 
a hundred other ways. They worked on its 
ramparts and in its ditches; they brought the 
generals to whom they came valuable informa- 
tion as to what the confederates were doing and 
where they might be found; and many an expe- 
dition owed its success to the guidance of some 
escaped slave who knew the country and the 
roads and piloted the soldiers to victory. 

Abraham Lincoln never proved better the per- 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 249 

feet uprightness of his character than when he 
hesitated in declaring the slaves of the confeder- 
ates free and waited to do this until he was sure 
the time had fully come. All his life, as we 
know, he had hated slavery. No man in the 
world wanted more to have these people free 
than he did. But Lincoln never did a thing 
simply because he wanted it done, and even 
when he knew that on some accounts it ought 
to be done ; he must be satisfied that he was fully 
right ; then no power in the world could prevent 
his doing the thing. Others could tell what 
ought to be done, what they would do in his 
place. But they were not in his place. Even if 
the South did deny it for the time, Lincoln was 
President of the whole country, of the South 
as well as the North ; that was what the armies 
and the war meant; his oath of office meant to 
him that he was friend and ruler of the South, 
not its enemy, and was bound to consider in 
all he did what was best for it as well as for 
the North. Then, there were the loyal border 
States which held slaves and were not ready to 
give them up, even for money ; for Mr. Lincoln 
had tried these States. 

Then, as it grew more and more plain that 
nothing could be done until slavery was out of 
the way, while people on both sides of the ques- 
tion talked him to death as to what he ought or 



250 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ought not to do, he made up his own mind and 
waited the right time. 

The spring and summer of 1862 were hard for 
the Union cause; it had some victories bought 
with many lives of the soldiers; but the cam- 
paign before Richmond had been a failure ; Lee 
was threatening to invade the North and things 
looked very dark. That summer Lincoln made 
a draft of his Emancipation Proclamation ; and 
at the end of July, or the first of August, he 
called a full meeting of the Cabinet, and read 
it to them. Some liked, and some criticised. 
Then Mr. Seward said that he liked it, but 
thought it ought not to be issued just at that 
time because the government had been having 
so many defeats that the country would think 
it had come to the end of its resources ; it would 
be better to wait until times had improved. It 
is probable that the President himself thought 
so, too ; but he wanted to hear what his advisers 
would say. He said to some one afterward that 
he knew when Lee came over the Potomac that 
McClellan would drive him back sometime, and 
then the Emancipation Proclamation should be 
sent after him. 

The Saturday after the battle of Antietam, 
when Lee, not beaten thoroughly as he ought 
to have been, but still driven back, had crossed 
the Potomac again, the President called another 



THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. 251 

Cabinet meeting; but this time it was not to 
give advice, but to hear his decision. For he 
said that the time for hesitation or delay had 
passed, that emancipation must now be the de- 
. clared policy of the administration, and that 
public sentiment would sustain it. "That was 
not all," says Stoddard in telling the scene. 
"In a low voice and reverently, Mr. Lincoln 
added: 'And I have promised my God that I 
will do it.' Mr. Chase who sat nearest him, 
heard indistinctly, and asked : ' Did I understand 
you correctly, Mr. President?' Mr. Lincoln re- 
plied : ' I made a solemn vow before God, that, 
if General Lee should be driven back from 
Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the 
declaration of freedom to the slaves. ' ' ' 

The proclamation was issued Monday, Sep- 
tember twenty-second, 1862. It announced that 
on January first, 1863, all persons held as slaves 
in any State or part of a State then in resistance 
against the United States should be thencefor- 
ward and forever free, and that the government 
would maintain their freedom. 

There were the border States still loyal to the 
government, and there were places even in the 
States resisting the authority of the government 
where people were loyal. But it was plain that 
if the other slaves were free, the time would 



252 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

soon come when these would be also, and Mr. 
Lincoln in his proclamation promised to recom- 
mend that all citizens who had remained loyal 
during the war should be paid for all losses of 
property they had suffered "by acts of the 
United States, including the loss of slaves." 

Before the sun went down that twenty-second 
of September, the whole nation had heard of 
the proclamation. The greater part of the 
loyal people received it with thanks to Lincoln, 
and with thanksgiving to Grod. All over New 
England, and over New York, and Pennsyl- 
vania, and across the Western prairies to the 
little towns by the Rockies the people rang the 
joy bells. There were great public meetings, 
and resolutions of approval, and thanksgiving 
in the churches. In many places the soldiers 
cheered and fired salutes. McClellan said his 
army would not fight an abolition war; but when 
Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to this army, the sol- 
diers welcomed him with delight. 



XXXIV. 

Foes Before and Foes Behind. 

That first year in the White House Mr. Lin- 
coln's two boys, Willie and "Tad," used to run 
in and out through the rooms and the offices 
bringing sunshine with them, going everywhere 
and doing everything, as boys have a way of 
doing. There is a story how one day all the 
bells in the White House rang the whole day long 
and nobody could make out what was the matter 
—until, at last, little Tad was discovered in the 
garret at work on the centre pin from which all 
the wires started. Willie's tricks were no less 
amusing. Often, one, or perhaps both boys 
would come and stand by their father's knee 
when he was talking to grave statesmen or self- 
important generals. And if they did receive 
a rebuke from the President, it was most mildly 
given and did not much resemble "army disci- 
pline"; for no man ever loved his children better 
than Mr. Lincoln did. 

253 



254 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

But these happy moments to the burdened 
President came suddenly to an end. For in the 
February of 1862, when all his strength was 
needed to try to start a vigorous campaign in 
Virginia, both boys were taken ill ; and the elder 
of the two, Willie, a child full of promise, died. 
The broken-hearted father could spare but little 
time for mourning; even then his duties filled 
his days, and he well understood that noble say- 
ing that grief for those who have died should 
not interfere with our duties to the living. But 
his sorrow lived with him the rest of his days. 

And so, saddened by his personal loss in the 
midst of the disasters and dangers of his coun- 
try, he went forward to meet her foes who were 
marshalled before in battle array; but he often 
turned about, to drive back the foes and traitors 
behind him at the North who were striking at 
the nation's life. At the South in the bad days 
of the war, no man dared for his life to say a 
word in favor of the Union. But at the North 
men said what they pleased, until some inter- 
fered with the raising of men for the army and 
the carrying on of the war. Then how did Mr. 
Lincoln punish the worst of these Northern 
traitors? He sent him down South among the 
secessionists and ordered him to stay there until 
the war was over ! 

All the North laughed. But the traitors trein- 



FOES BEFORE AND FOES BEHIND. 255 

bled. To be sent as prisoners to a Northern 
fortress might make them pitied ; and they could 
perhaps get away. But times were hard at the 
South; people there had not too much to eat, 
even then. Besides, there men thought a great 
deal of going with one's State and might despise 
them. They felt like the Southern wife of a 
naval officer who had been true to his flag ; after 
he died in the service of his country, she lived 
among his relatives and railed against the 
North. But when they asked her why she did 
not go South among her own relations, she said 
she was much safer and more comfortable at 
the North. So, after Mr. Lincoln had sent the 
Copperhead, Vallandingham, down South, the 
other Copperheads kept more quiet. 

But so many of the best patriots were in the 
army, away from their States, that the fall elec- 
tions went badly ; and this might mean shortness 
of men and money for the war. The President 
must keep the North united. He must make 
Europe perceive that the government would 
be successful in this war. He must make the 
emancipation policy a fact. And to do these 
things he needed victories. No wonder that he 
turned his sad eyes to the army where General 
Ambrose E. Burnside, brave and loyal, but not 
a great commander, was leading the army of the 
Potomac. But in Burnside as a leader there was 



256 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

bitter disappointment. For, so far from bring- 
ing victory, it was under him that was fought 
and lost the battle of Fredericksburg in the 
December of 1862, a battle which, as has already 
been said, cost thousands of brave men. That 
defeat made the confederates jubilant, discour- 
aged the loyal people, but did not break their 
spirit, and gave fresh opportunity to those at 
the North who opposed the war. 

The year 1862 ended in the gloom of this de- 
feat. It was understood also that the next year, 
1863, the confederates would put forth their 
utmost military strength. There must be new 
strength in the armies to conquer this. But of 
all the war measures during Lincoln's adminis- 
tration none was so unpopular as the "Draft 
Act" which he requested of Congress. This 
would enroll the militia of all the States and 
make them subject to the call of the President at 
need. Instead of taking only those who were 
willing, as the volunteers had been, it would take 
also the cowards and those who did not care for 
their country. But men must be had; for ter- 
rible battles were coming, as Lincoln knew. 

Early in April came the victories of Shi 1 oh 
and Corinth, which will be more fully spoken 
of later. Mr. Lincoln in a proclamation asked 
the people to "render thanks to onr Heavenly 
Father for these inestimable blessings." 



FOES BEFORE AND FOES BEHIND. 257 

In the May of 1863, however, the army of the 
Potomac under General Hooker, who had taken 
General Burnside's place, was terribly defeated 
by General Lee at Chancellorsville in Virginia. 
The fighting was long and obstinate and the 
losses on both sides very great. The people did 
not know then, as Mr. Lincoln did, that the bat- 
tle had cost the South very much, so that a few 
such battles would have left the confederates 
but a small army. Lincoln kept urging that 
another battle should be fought immediately, 
before Lee could rest from this one. But he 
could not get it done. The right man had not 
come to Virginia yet. 

There was more and more hatred of the draft ; 
and, a little later, a great riot in New York City, 
on account of it. At no time in the whole war 
had things looked darker for the Union than 
after Chancellorsville. 

But the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan- 
uary first, 1863, had been made. Slavery was 
gone, although there were still acts to be passed 
to wipe it from our records. And the South 
was in trouble also; it realized its failing 
strength, and resolved that something desperate 
must be done. 

General Lee did it. For the South had heard 
all the Copperhead talk at the North and be- 
lieved that it meant a great party to rise to its 



258 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

support if the Southern army were present to 
support it. The fact was that the Copperheads 
were no fighters; they took it out in talk; they 
would never help anybody. But the confeder- 
ates counted on them and on New York City. 
And so, General Lee with the best army that the 
South had, crossed the Potomac and marched 
into Pennsylvania. 

Then the whole North awoke and shook itself 
in its wrath. The draft was almost popular. 
The weary eyes of the President lightened as 
the military movements on the Mississippi 
brightened the dark sky with hope. And his 
waiting ears caught the sound, all over the 
North, of men marching to swell the army of 
the Union and singing as they marched: 

"We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred 
thousand more, 
From Mississippi's winding stream, and from New 
England's shore!" 



XXXV. 

General Grant at Vicksburg. 

In the May of 1861, at about the same time 
that McClellan was created a general of the 
army of the Potomac, there was a little man 
whose home was at Galena, Illinois, but who 
had been serving on the staff of the Governor 
of Illinois, helping to organize the State militia. 
He had been educated at the military school at 
West Point, as had McClellan, and also he had 
been in the Mexican war, as McClellan had been. 
At first offers of a position in the army had 
been declined by this little man from Galena. 
But when the President called for one hundred 
and fifty thousand soldiers, this modest man 
from Lincoln's own State wrote to the war de- 
partment at Washington that he had served fif- 
teen years in the regular army, four of these at 
West Point, and he offered his services to the 
government to the close of the war in any capaci- 
ty that might be offered him; and he added 
259 



260 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

that he felt himself competent to command a 
regiment "if the President in his judgment 
should see fit to intrust me with one." He 
added that he was still serving on the Gov- 
ernor's staff, and that a letter addressed to him 
at Springfield would reach him. 

This modest little man who held himself ca- 
pable of commanding a regiment was Ulysses 
S. Grant, a general who blazed a track to victory- 
through the woods of difficulty, destined to be 
Lincoln's final choice to command the armies of 
the Union, the coming man whom the country 
and all the world would honor. 

He got his appointment. He telegraphed 
back: "I accept the regiment and will start im- 
mediately. ' ' The regiment given to him was a 
set of insubordinate men whom nobody else 
could do anything with and whom most of the 
officers were afraid of. As soon as he arrived, 
"travel-stained, ununiformed, with a large ban- 
dana tied outside the waist of his sack-coat for 
a sash," say Nicolay and Hay, "and a stick for 
a sword, Colonel Grant undertook to get his reg- 
iment into line — a vain task. The new com- 
mander persevered in his efforts quietly, with- 
out bluster, without oaths, without for a moment 
losing his patience or his temper, but holding 
on to his work with that desperate and char- 
acteristic pertinacity which made him famous." 



GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 261 

Still, this first attempt failed, and the Governor 
went home thinking he had made a mistake in 
Grant. Soon after Fremont, who was then 
commander, ordered the regiment to Quincy. 
The railroad agent went to Grant to find what 
transportation he wanted. Grant said that a 
part of the way he should have to march, as 
there was no railroad and they could not wait 
to have one built; and as the regiment was in 
bad discipline, he would march all the way; his 
orders gave him time enough. So he started 
with his wagons. 

The first evening he issued an order that the 
next morning the regiment would march at six 
o'clock. But at six o'clock many of the men 
were still asleep and the regiment did not get off 
until seven. The next evening he gave the order 
that the following morning the regiment would 
march at six, ready or not ready. At six exactly 
the column was formed and the march began ; a 
good many of the laggards had not even their 
shoes on and had to march without them and 
could not even carry them. After two or three 
miles' march the column halted, and the shoes 
were sent for. The next morning "the tap of 
the six o'clock drum found every man ready 
to fall in." This is one of the stories told of 
Grant. At least, we know that one wonderful 



262 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

thing about him was that he was always on 
time; and his men had to be > 

It was Mr. Lincoln's belief that the Southern 
confederacy could not be captured at once, "all 
in a lump," as one might say; but must be taken 
possession of "a slice at a time.'" By wonder- 
ful tact and ability and knowledge of conditions, 
Lincoln had kept the States of Missouri, Ken- 
tucky, and Maryland in the Union when at the 
beginning of the war they were all perched on 
a fence so narrow that even a jolt would have 
sent them to the Southern confederacy. Before 
the war was over he could say that many sol- 
diers were in the Union army from each of these 
States which had at first refused any. 

And the President was continually watching 
the West to find what was going on there. He 
found some things he liked well. So did the 
country. Halleck, Grant, Thomas, on land, and 
Foote and Farragut in the navy were making it 
lively for the confederates and taking possession 
of Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee 
in a series of victories which there is not space 
to give in detail. For by the November after 
his appointment as colonel, Grant had risen to 
be a general. 

The confederates had fortified and garrisoned 
Fort Donelson on the Cumberland and Fort 
Henry on the Tennessee Rivers running through 



GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 263 

Kentucky and Tennessee from the South into 
the Ohio River, because they wanted to keep out 
the Union gunboats. But General Grant and 
Flag-officer Foote were not of that mind; they 
planned an attack of Fort Henry. February 
sixth, 1862, Foote captured the fort without 
waiting for Grant to come up. Then Grant and 
Foote went to Fort Donelson, and besieged it, 
February sixteenth. After several days' hard 
fighting, the confederate General Buckner sent a 
flag of truce to General Grant and asked him to 
stop the firing for a time until they could settle 
terms of surrender. Grant did not stop a can- 
non, but answered him: "No terms except 
unconditional surrender can be accepted. I pro- 
pose to move on your works immediately." But 
Buckner did not give him a chance; he sur- 
rendered at once. Arms, stores and more than 
twelve thousand prisoners were captured. This 
was why Grant came to be called: "Uncon- 
ditional Surrender Grant." How the North 
liked the name ! 

That same month the Union troops marched 
into Nashville, and the Unionists in East Ten- 
nessee rejoiced to see the dear old flag. Early 
in March the battle of Pea Ridge was fought— a 
three days' battle— and then General Halleck 
telegraphed : "The Union flag is floating in Ar- 
kansas. ' ' The confederates saw that at that rate 



264 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

the whole valley of the Mississippi Biver would 
soon be lost to them. So General Lee calculated 
that all would stay " quiet on the Potomac," as 
it so long had done, and sent some of his best 
forces West to defeat Generals Grant and Buell. 
But at the battles of Shiloh— or Pittsburgh 
Landing, as it is sometimes called — and Corinth, 
things did not come out as the confederates had 
planned. General Johnston, one of the best con- 
federate generals, attacked in haste and fury, 
planning to whip Grant before General Buell 
could come up with him. Grant met him with 
unflinching determination. All day long the bat 
tie lasted; the Union troops were gradually 
driven back, with the river behind them, and the 
day closed in with the advantage all on the con- 
federate side. General Beauregard announced a 
complete victory for the confederates. But he 
spoke a little too soon. For that night Buell 
came up with his fine army and joined Grant. 
Some men would have thought he came too late 
to be of use. But Grant did not look at it so. 
The next day he started in again, fought the 
battle all over, drove the confederates from the 
field and pursued them toward their entrench- 
ments at Corinth. Soon came the battle of Cor- 
inth where they were again defeated, and driven 
from their entrenchments, and the Union forces 
won an important victory. These were among 






GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 265 

the most bloody battles of the war. But the sun 
went down on flying confederates who had found 
out what kind of men the soldiers of the West 
were, and who never forgot it. The confederate 
army, too, fought splendidly. 

After New Orleans and some other points 
upon the river had been captured, Vicksburg, 
in Mississippi and not far from Jackson, the 
capital, stood in a strong position and bristling 
with fortifications which the confederates were 
always strengthening still more. Its formidable 
guns swept across the Mississippi River and up 
and down it for miles and blockaded for the 
government the passage of this great waterway 
through our country. Attempts had been made 
to capture Vicksburg in 1862 ; but they had not 
been successful, for the place was too strong to 
be taken by storm. But so long as Vicksburg 
was in the hands of the South, the river was cut 
in two for the government, and the States it had 
conquered were subject to raids if not recap- 
ture by the confederate forces. It was abso- 
lutely necessary that the government should 
have Vicksburg, for that fortress in the West 
was almost as important to it as Richmond in 
the East. 

General Grant was set to capture Vicksburg. 

It is impossible to begin to tell all the hard 
work that he and the brave generals and the 



266 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

brave soldiers did, and all the toil and weariness 
and suffering they endured ; how Grant tried to 
approach the fortress from different points; 
how he had to give up now one thing and now 
another and change his plans to suit the needs 
of his undertaking; and how more than once 
some colored man faithful to the Union troops 
would tell him of a road that he had not known 
about. The soldiers forced little gunboats up 
and down narrow fivers where great boughs of 
trees hung so low that they swept the decks; 
they encircled the city by land and blockaded it 
by water so that provisions should not go to the 
garrison ; they made magnificent charges in try- 
ing to storm the place ; they then began to mine, 
when General Grant found that the place was too 
strong to storm. The men in their mining were 
sheltered in the woods where they found shade 
and fine springs of water and were better off 
than when camping in the dusty city. So, day 
after day, the mining and fighting went on and 
the troops were digging their way into Vicks- 
burg. As the confederate general watched them 
he had also to meet another foe — hunger. His 
army was short of provisions; and Grant had 
surrounded him so thoroughly that there was 
no chance of relief. Therefore, at last he hung 
out a white flag and sent to Grant for terms of 



GENERAL GRANT AT VICKSBURG. 267 

surrender. Grant told him it must be ''uncon- 
ditional surrender." 

In his report, Grant says that the confeder- 
ates had been defeated in five battles outside of 
Vicksburg; and that over thirty thousand pris- 
oners and arms and munitions for sixty thou- 
sand men had been captured, also much public 
property, railroads, cars, steamboats, etc., and 
that much had been destroyed to prevent the 
Union forces from capturing it. Altogether, the 
capture of Vicksburg was the most brilliant and 
successful campaign of the war. 

Vicksburg was captured on the Fourth of 
July, 1863. 

But that day the nation did not know it. Lee 
had come into Pennsylvania; and that very 
Fourth of July something else was taking place 
that filled all thoughts and all hearts. 



XXXVI. 

Wak on the Ocean. 

In a letter of Mr. Lincoln's for publication 
written in the August of 1863, summing up the 
results of the war and showing the people where 
the government then stood, he wrote, referring 
to the work of the navy: ''Nor must Uncle 
Sam's web feet be forgotten. At all the watery 
margins they have been present, not only on the 
deep sea, the broad bay and the rapid river, but 
also up the narrow and muddy bayou, and wher- 
ever the ground was a little damp, they have 
been and made their tracks." When Mr. Stod- 
dard to whom the President read the letter be- 
fore sending it, objected to this paragraph, Mr. 
Lincoln laughed and said he thought Stoddard 
would point at that. " *I won't strike it out, 
though, ' he added. 'The plain people will like 
it. It's just what I mean to say.' " 

And it was true. The navy had been skirting 
around the Southern shores, running up by 

2G8 



WAR ON THE OCEAN. 269 

river and creek and bay into the land and in 
union with the army taking possession wherever 
this was possible. Early in 1862 General Burn- 
side, with Commodore Goldsborough, had cap- 
tured Roanoke Island in North Carolina, and 
shortly afterward, in concert with another naval 
officer, the city of Newburn, the most important 
seaport of North Carolina. Fort Hatteras and 
Port Royal in North and South Carolina had 
been seized by our troops in 1861, and were held. 
And in 1862, Fort Pulaski in Georgia was cap- 
tured. And so, by these places, all through the 
war the stars and stripes floated over three 
States fighting against them, South Carolina 
the most violent of all in the confederacy. 

But New Orleans must be captured. In the 
autumn of 1861 an expedition under command 
of Captain David G. Farragut, one of the most 
skilful and daring naval officers in the world, 
and of General Butler, who commanded the land 
forces, was organized to capture it. The follow- 
ing March Butler landed his troops on Ship 
Island, which is in the Gulf of Mexico between 
Mobile and New Orleans. This was as far as 
he could go until Farragut should come with his 
gunboats and open the way up the river. April 
seventeenth Farragut began to bombard the 
forts that guarded the approach to New Orleans 
by the river. He kept on bombarding for sev- 



270 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

eral days ; but the forts would not surrender and 
he could not destroy them. So, he said that he 
would run past their guns. It was a wonderful 
undertaking; for the forts stood on opposite 
sides of the river and mounted more than one 
hundred heavy cannon, which swept everything 
that tried to pass them. And besides this, the 
river itself was blocked by sunken hulks, by 
piles and everything else which could be put 
into it to stop the passage of ships. And this 
was not all, although it seemed enough; the 
confederates had thirteen gunboats, an ironclad, 
and the ram Manassas. 

The people of New Orleans boasted that all 
they were afraid of was that "the Northern 
invaders" would not come. They need not have 
been anxious as to Farragut 's not coming ! "On 
the night of April twenty-fourth," says Arnold, 
"amidst a storm of shot and shell, the darkness 
illuminated by the mingled fires of ships, forts 
and burning vessels, he passed Forts Jackson 
and St. Philip; he crushed through all obstruc- 
tions ; he destroyed the gunboats which opposed 
him; he steamed past the batteries; he ascended 
the great river and laid his broadsides to the 
proud city of the Southwest." Then New 
Orleans hauled down the confederate flag, and 
never had a chance to put it up again. 

But not only on the bays and rivers, but on 



WAR ON THE OCEAN. 271 

the ocean also were there battles fought between 
the North and the South. There is time only 
to refer to some of them. 

At the beginning of the war when the naval 
station at Norfolk was given up to the confeder- 
acy by traitors in the navy, there were ships 
left in the hands of the confederates, and among 
them the famous "Merrimac." The confeder- 
ates sheathed her sides with iron, named her the 
"Virginia," and in the March of 1862, she 
steamed down the James River, and destroyed 
the government vessels, the "Cumberland" and 
the ' ' Congress. ' ' The ' ' Cumberland ' ' fought to 
the last and went down with flags flying. The 
' ' Minnesota, ' ' when she was coming to the aid of 
the ' ' Cumberland, ' ' ran aground and was at the 
mercy of the terrible "Merrimac." There was 
terror in the North; for Washington itself 
seemed to be in the power of this frightful 
"Merrimac." 

But just when we feared the most, there came 
floating through the water the strangest looking 
thing that ever called itself a vessel. This was 
the ironclad "Monitor," built by the famous 
Ericsson. It attacked the big ' ' Merrimac ' ' with 
great boldness, and fired into it again and again 
and again, doing much damage at every shot. 
But it made no difference how many broadsides 
the ' ' Merrimac ' ' fired back ; they couldn 't hit the 



272 LIFE OP LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

little "Monitor," for there was nothing of it to 
hit ; it was about all under water, like a turtle. 
So, the North was no longer afraid of the great 
"Merrimac," for the little "Monitor" riddled 
it with shot, until it was glad enough to run to 
shelter. With all honor to the genius of its 
builder and the skill and daring of its com- 
mander, it is said that the chief credit for having 
the "Monitor" built and on hand at such a 
crisis, is due to President Lincoln. 

Every one has heard of the battle between the 
"Kearsarge" and the "Alabama," a cruiser 
built in England and sailing under the confeder- 
ate flag, capturing merchant vessels and with 
others like it doing all it could to ruin com- 
merce. The "Alabama" was one of the worst 
of these cruisers. In the June of 1864, after 
it had been doing much damage on the seas, 
it put in at Cherbourg, France. Captain Wins- 
low of the United States navy, in command of 
the "Kearsarge," heard of it, and started for 
Cherbourg, and waited for the "Alabama." 
The "Alabama" made ready for the fight as 
carefully as possible and then came out to meet 
the "Kearsarge." There was a tremendous 
battle between the two ships for about an hour, 
and then the "Alabama" put out the white flag 
<>f surrender, and soon sank. The "Kearsarge" 
helped to save some of the crew. Admiral Far- 



WAR ON THE OCEAN. 273 

ragut said of this battle: "It was fought in full 
view of thousands of French and English, with 
full confidence on the part of all but the Union 
people that we would be whipped. I would 
sooner have fought that fight than any ever 
fought on the ocean." 

There is not space to tell how Admiral Farra- 
gut captured the forts and city of Mobile when 
everybody said it could not be done. Nor to 
speak of other brave and spirited deeds of the 
United States navy. 



XXXVII. 

On the Field of Gettysbukg. 

General Lee with a splendid army was now 
in Pennsylvania; part of his troops had come 
to Carlisle, about an hour by train from Harris- 
burg, the capital of the State. Even in Phila- 
delphia, people had begun to throw up entrench- 
ments. Where would Lee stop ? Who would 
stop him? This work was for the army of the 
Potomac, and at that time General Hooker was 
its commander. To say that Lincoln was anxious 
is putting it lightly; his whole soul was filled 
with the importance and the urgency of the 
coming battle. It must be a fierce one ; for the 
world has seldom seen as good, and never better 
armies than the two which were then to meet, 
General Lee's confederate forces and the Union 
army of the Potomac, both armies seasoned by 
many battles, each well aware of the fighting 
qualities of the other and ready to meet these 
with equal valor. 

274 



ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 275 

But General Hooker just at that time was 
offended by some orders which he received from 
General Halleck, or from the President, and he 
resigned. He was arranging matters finely and 
it was dangerous at that time to put a new com- 
mander at the head of the army, but it had to 
be done. Mr. Lincoln said: "A general who 
resigns his commission on the eve of battle 
should always have his resignation accepted, let 
the consequences be what they may." So Gen- 
eral Meade was put in command. General 
Hooker was noble and patriotic enough to ask 
to be allowed to serve under him. But Meade 
did not wish it. But the President later gave 
Hooker an opportunity to show his valor at the 
West. This Hooker did. 

It was not at first the purpose of either com- 
mander to fight the battle at Gettysburg ; indeed, 
Meade chose another spot. But the attack came 
on at Gettysburg, and there the fight had to be 
finished. The situation was fine for our army, 
which was excellently posted in a sort of semi- 
circle on high ground so that the centre and the 
wings of the army supported each other. 

On the first of July, 1863, came the first attack 
of the confederates. That afternoon they had 
the best of it. But the next day began a fiercer 
battle with more troops on each side. Some of 



276 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Meade's generals tried to induce him to attack 
Lee's centre and try to smash through it and 
divide the confederate army; but Meade wisely 
chose to keep his strong position and let Lee 
attack him. Longstreet, the ablest confederate 
general, begged Lee not to attack as he had 
ordered. But Lee would do it. He had been 
successful the day before, and he could not 
resist trying to defeat Meade ; for he saw what 
victory would mean to the South. So, the after- 
noon of July second the battle was on again. 
How terrible and fierce it was! The soldiers 
on both sides, as well as the officers, knew that 
they were fighting for the life of their cause. 
For Gettysburg was one of the great battles of 
the world, not merely because it was one of the 
most obstinately contested ever fought, and 
with greater loss of life in proportion to the 
numbers engaged than in almost any other, nor 
even because never was greater bravery shown 
on both sides. But it was a battle for the liber- 
ties of a great people, a battle to test whether 
our government was to stand. 

AVhen the sun went down on July second the 
battle was not yet over. At dawn the morning 
of the third the two armies went at it again. 
The confederates were attacked and General 
Ewell, who commanded the forces which Stone- 
wall Jackson led when he was living, was driven 



ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 277 

back. Then there was a little lull on the battle- 
field. 

But Lee had determined to take Cemetery 
Hill, which was the key of the Union position. 
So, at one o'clock in the afternoon there sud- 
denly burst out of the stillness the thunder of 
one hundred and thirty cannon. Never had the 
soldiers or officers on either side heard or 
imagined anything so terrific; and when the 
Union artillery answered back, the uproar was 
still more terrible. This cannonade lasted about 
an hour. Then because General Howard ceased 
firing, to cool off the guns and save the ammu- 
nition for the coming infantry attack, General 
Lee thought his artillery was silenced, and he 
ordered the attack. The confederates came on, 
as steady as troops on parade. But when they 
were half way across the valley toward the 
lines, the artillery Lee had thought he had 
silenced burst upon them. Growing fewer in 
number at every step the column still moved on, 
and the battle joined. So fierce and terrible was 
it that for a few minutes the soldiers on both 
sides could not even hear their officers, and 
fought man to man. Then the confederates gave 
way; the Union soldiers sprang forward; the 
shortest and, considering its shortness, the most 
bloody of the three days' battle was over. Lee 
had tried at Gettysburg somewhat the same 



278 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

thing that Burnside had at Fredericksburg; and 
he had lost. 

But Meade did not at first realize how matters 
stood, nor how thoroughly he had beaten Lee. 
The next day the armies were drawn up in 
battle. Lee had expected his army to be cut to 
pieces after its rejiulse on the day before; and 
if Grant or Sheridan had been in Meade's place, 
the critics say, he would have had only the rem- 
nants of an army to carry across the Potomac. 
The greater part of that following day the coun- 
try waited to know how the battle had gone. 

"What a Fourth of July it was! Those who 
remember and speak of it say that it can never 
be forgotten. North and South, men and women 
waited, breathless for news. They thought of 
the soldiers wounded and dying, of the dead on 
the field, and at the North, as they looked up at 
the dear old flag which floated in every town in 
memory of the day when the United States had 
first become a nation, they wondered if the 
sacrifice of so many precious lives had been 
accepted, and if we had yet a country. The joy- 
bells of the Fourth that rang half fearfully in 
the morning were silent in many towns at the 
hour of noon when still the country waited. 

Then came the news! The President an- 
nounced to the country that up to ten o'clock on 
the third, the news from the army of the Poto- 



ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 279 

mac was "such as to cover the army with the 
highest honor— to promise great success to the 
cause of the Union— and to claim the condolence 
of all for the many gallant fallen"; and for this 
he added, "he especially desired that on this 
day, 'He whose will, not ours, should ever be 
done be everywhere remembered and reverenced 
with the profoundest gratitude.' " 

On the evening of that July Fourth Mr. 
Lincoln was serenaded. In answer he spoke of 
what that day means to the nation, how many 
remarkable national events had happened on 
the Fourth of July, and how these battles in 
Pennsylvania fought on the first, second, and 
third of that month were victories over the 
cohorts of those who opposed the Declaration 
of Independence. 

July fifteenth the President issued a procla- 
mation appointing the fourth of August as a 
day "for thanksgiving, praise and prayer, and 
to render homage to the Divine Majesty for the 
wonderful things He had done for the nation, 
and to pray for the Holy Spirit to bring it the 
blessings of union and peace." 

Mr. Lincoln was deeply thankful for the Union 
victories East and West. But he was terribly 
disappointed that Meade allowed Lee to get 
safely back across the Potomac into Virginia. 
"We had them in.our grasp," Nicolay and Hay 



280 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

tell of his saying; "we had only to stretch 
out our hands and they were ours, and nothing 
I could say or do could make the army move." 
He was angry at Meade's speaking of "driving 
the invader from our soil," and said it was like 
McClellan who claimed a great victory because 
"Pennsylvania and Maryland were safe." 
"Will our generals never get that idea out of 
their heads?" he cried. "The whole country 
is our soil. ' ' He said : ' ' Our army held the war 
in the hollow of their hand and they would not 
close it." But he added that he was "very 
grateful to Meade for the service he did at 
Gettysburg. ' ' 

It was no wonder that Lincoln was distressed 
that Lee 's army had not been destroyed and the 
war ended at once. It was the President's habit 
when his duties allowed him the time to go to 
visit the sick and wounded soldiers; he often 
went at night to the hospitals at Washington 
and the field hospitals around it. Here the line 
of ambulances moving from the steamers to the 
hospitals was often one and two miles long. 
Arnold speaks of one day meeting the President 
driving slowly toward the Soldiers' Home. He 
had just parted from one of those lines of ambu- 
lances. "Look yonder at those poor fellows," 
he said. "I cannot bear it. This suffering, this 
loss of life is dreadful." It was no wonder he 



ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 281 

was distressed, as it has been said, that Meade 
had not crushed Lee's army and ended the war 
then and there. 

The idea of a military cemetery at Gettysburg 
was soon made national. The State of Penn- 
sylvania bought a piece of land on this illus- 
trious battlefield, and gave it to the United 
States as a cemetery in which to bury its heroes 
slain there. November nineteenth of this year 
1863, this ground was consecrated with solemn 
and touching ceremonies. There were present 
Seward, Stanton, Welles and Chase of the Cabi- 
net; war governers, Andrew of Massachusetts, 
Seymour of New York, Morgan of Indiana, 
Johnson of Tennessee; Everett, Sumner, Fes- 
senden, Wilson, Greeley, Frederick Douglas, and 
Grant, Meade, McClellan, Howard and Butler, 
representing strong yet different elements of 
the forces that had struggled to maintain the 
Union. Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a 
distinguished scholar and orator, had been 
chosen to give the oration. 

But above all these, the central figure, as he 
always was wherever he was seen, was the 
President, Abraham Lincoln. On the way to 
Gettysburg he had been told that he would be 
expected to say something. He had borrowed 
a pencil and written down on rough paper those 
few words that he read at Gettysburg, words 






282 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

that have gone around the globe, and that have 
rightly been held for brevity, simplicity, force 
and beauty one of the great orations of the 
world. He had written it hastily, to be sure; 
but it was great because he had first lived it, 
and because in living and writing it he had for- 
gotten himself entirely and thought only of the 
soldiers and the country. He rose slowly, his 
face alight with deep feeling, and read what he 
had written. It was this: 

''Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent, a new nation, 
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the propo- 
sition that all men are created equal. 

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. 
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, 
as a final resting place for those who here gave 
their lives that that nation might live. It is 
altogether fitting and proper that we should do 
this. 

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate— 
we cannot consecrate— we cannot hallow— this 
ground. The brave men, living and dead, who 
struggled here have consecrated it, far above 
our poor power to add or detract. The world 
will little note, nor long remember what we say 



. ON THE FIELD OF GETTYSBURG. 283 

here, but it can never forget what they did here. 
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work which they who 
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us,— that from these 
honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
cause for which they gave the last full measure 
of devotion— that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain— that this 
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of 
freedom— and that government of the people, 
by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." 

As Mr. Lincoln finished speaking, and the 
tears and sobs and cheers which had met him 
subsided, he turned to Edward Everett and con- 
gratulated him on his success. 

Arnold tells us that Everett answered: "Ah, 
Mr. President, how gladly would I exchange all 
my hundred pages to have been the author of 
your twenty lines." 



XXXVIII. 
How Mr. Lincoln Teied for Peace. 

It has been said, and truly, that there was no 
time from the beginning to the end of the civil 
war when we could have had peace without 
acknowledging the Confederate States as a sep- 
arate government; that would have meant dis- 
union. 

There were many people at the North and 
some at the South who talked of peace ; but they 
did not mean peace of the right kind. No one 
in the whole country longed for peace more 
earnestly than Mr. Lincoln did. When there 
was a prospect of another great battle with its 
dreadful list of killed and wounded, his kind, 
loving heart was wrung at the thought. But he 
knew that we must conquer a peace; the South 
would have no other kind, except without the 
Union. 

June, 1863, leaders of the peace party met at 
Springfield, Illinois, and held a mass meeting. 
They wanted to carry the Northwest and make a 

2S4 



HOW MR. LINCOLN TRIED FOR PEACE. 285 

peace that should submit to whatever the South 
desired. After this the Republicans resolved to 
hold a great meeting at the same place the third 
of September, 1863; and they asked the Presi- 
dent to be present. How much Mr. Lincoln would 
have liked to meet his old neighbors and friends, 
whom he was never to see again together, as he 
would have done there. But he could not leave 
his work at Washington. So, he wrote a letter 
to be read at the Convention. One of his biogra- 
phers declares : "In this letter which the chair- 
man took only ten minutes to read, Lincoln said 
more than all the orators at all the stands." 
Among many other things, all of which the read- 
ers of this record of Lincoln should some day 
read, he said : 

"The signs look better. The Father of 
Waters again goes unvexed to the sea." (For 
a few days after the fall of Vicksburg, General 
Grant had captured Port Hudson, which opened 
the Mississippi River entirely.) * * * "Peace 
does not appear so distant as it did," wrote Mr. 
Lincoln after speaking of the Union victories. 
"I hope it will come soon and come to stay; and 
so come as to be worth the keeping in all future 
time. * * * Still, let us not be over-sanguine 
of a speedy, final triumph. Let us be quite 
sober" (reasonable). "Let us diligently apply 
the means, never doubting that a just God, in 



286 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

His own good time, will give us the rightful 
result." 

The only peace that Lincoln really believed 
would come was when the war was fought out 
and the confederacy conquered. He thought 
this because he believed that the confederates 
would not come back so long as they had an 
army to fight with. And this proved true. 

But when people talked to him about listening 
to suggestions of peace, he was always most 
ready, provided this did not mean that the South 
was a separate and independent power. Mr. 
Greeley again wrote him one of his letters tell- 
ing him he (Mr. Lincoln) did not know how 
much the people wanted peace, and that there 
were men in Canada with authority to propose 
peace to him. Mr. Lincoln said he should be 
glad to talk with them, provided everything was 
all right to do so. But it turned out very far 
from right. Mr. Greeley always meant well; 
but, like other people, he made mistakes. Other 
attempts at peace conferences also amounted to 
nothing. 

But Mr. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke), in his book 
upon Lincoln, tells how the President once seized 
upon an opjDortunity to allow him to go in com- 
pany with another gentleman and interview Mr. 
Jefferson Davis as to any possibility of peace 
he would accept, or suggest. Mr. Lincoln would 



HOW MR. LINCOLN TRIED FOR PEACE. 287 

not send Mr. Gilmore, but was ready to learn if 
there was any chance to save further bloodshed. 

Mr. Gilmore had a long interview with Mr. 
Davis, and the most positive assurances from 
him that nothing short of the independence of 
the Southern confederacy was to be thought of. 

So, he came home with his companion— al- 
though the two came near being imprisoned in 
Richmond and kept there. When they reached 
the North, Mr. Gilmore wrote out what Mr. 
Davis had said, proving that if we would have 
the Union, we must fight the war out. 

The article was published in the "Atlantic 
Monthly," and republished by almost all the 
leading newspapers in the North, and copied 
entire by several English papers. "It was 
read," says Mr. Gilmore, "by not less than one- 
half of the four million men who voted in the 
Presidential election of 1864;" and he adds that 
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote him that it, cer- 
tainly, had a larger number of readers than any 
other magazine article ever written. 

So, the interview of Jefferson Davis with Mr. 
Gilmore, who was then one of the editors of Mr. 
Greeley's "New York Tribune," helped, after 
all, to bring about the peace that Lincoln be- 
lieved in— a peace bought on the battle-field; 
but a peace that would come to stay and would 
be worth the keeping. 



XXXIX. 

How the People Learned to Trust Him. 

Mr. Lincoln's letter to the meeting of the 
Republicans in Springfield, Illinois, was so full 
of logic and keen and clear reasoning and wit 
and so strong in the sense of his own responsibil- 
ity, that it was a great success. Charles Sumner, 
who at first had not approved of the President 
but afterward came to like him much, wrote to 
him: "Thanks for your true and noble letter. 
It is a historical document. The case is admir- 
ably stated, so that all but the wicked must con- 
fess its force. It cannot be answered." For in 
this letter Mr. Lincoln had spoken of peace 
measures and of emancipation, questions of 
which the country was full then. Henry Wilson, 
the other Senator from Massachusetts with Sum- 
ner wrote Lincoln: "God Almighty bless you 
for your noble, patriotic and Christian letter. 
It will be on the lips and in the hearts of hun- 
dreds of thousands this day." And one of the 

288 



HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 289 

messages about his letter that the President 
most appreciated came from Josiah Quincy, 
then ninety-one years old. Mr. Quincy wrote: 
"I cannot refrain from expressing to you my 
gratification and my gratitude for your letter 
to the Illinois Convention— happy, timely, con- 
clusive, and effective. What you say concern- 
ing emancipation, your proclamation, and your 
course of proceeding in relation to it was due 
to truth, and to your own character shamefully 
assailed as it has been. The development is an 
imperishable monument of wisdom and virtue." 
He went on to say that compromise was impos- 
sible, that only the war could bring us peace and 
Union. 

It is good to know that many such letters as 
these were written to Mr. Lincoln at that time ; 
for no man in a public office had ever been so 
cruelly misunderstood and spoken against. But 
at last the skies were brightening and people 
were coming to perceive what a wonderful man 
he was and what a great leader. But the thing 
which Lincoln cared for most of all— more than 
anything that could come to himself— was the 
success of the war for the Union, and the assur- 
ance of emancipation of the slaves. And what 
Lincoln says in this letter about the aid of the 
slaves in the war we ought to remember when 
we are proud of our great united country. After 



290 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

showing that we were not fighting "to free 
negroes," but using the help of the negroes, he 
says : "I thought that whatever negroes can be 
got to do as soldiers leaves just so much less 
for white soldiers to do in saving the Union. 
Does it appear otherwise to you? But negroes, 
like other people, act upon motives. Why should 
they do anything for us if we will do nothing 
for them? If they stake their iives for us, they 
must be prompted by the strongest motive, even 
the promise of freedom. And the promise, being 
made, must be kept." 

We have the problem of the colored people 
with us today; and when we think of it, we 
should remember that between one and two 
hundred thousand colored troops fought to help 
us save the Union, and have a right to feel this 
their country as well as ours, and to be treated 
as other men are treated. 

In this September of 1863, the Springfield 
Convention passed a resolution: "That we will 
lay aside all party questions and forget all party 
prejudices and devote ourselves unreservedly 
to the support of our Government, until the 
rebellion shall be finally and forever crushed; 
that whatever else may perish, the Government 
shall survive in all its constitutional integrity; 
whatever else may be destroyed, the nation shall 
be preserved in its territorial unity; and to this 



HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 291 

end we pledge anew our lives, our fortunes, and 
our sacred honor." 

As a result of the victories and Lincoln's 
letter and the Springfield Convention, every 
State that held elections that fall of 1863, except 
New Jersey, gave great majorities for the ad- 
ministration. The great riots against the draft 
in New York City in the July of that year helped 
the government in the end; the rioters were 
so horribly cruel that they turned thousands 
against their party. 

Grant and Sherman and Thomas and other 
generals in the West gave new courage to the 
deep loyalty of the North; and the better the 
people came to understand Mr. Lincoln, the 
more they trusted and the better they loved him. 
The men whom all the country most honored 
came out strongly in favor of the war as our 
only road to peace. Oliver Wendell Holmes 
wrote: 

"Listen, young heroes. Your country is calling, 

Time strikes the hour for the brave and the true; 
Now, while the foremost are fighting and falling, 

Fill up the ranks that have opened for you. 
You whom the fathers made free and defended, 

Stain not the scroll that emblazons their fame ; 
You whose fair heritage spotless descended, 

Leave not your children a birthright of shame!" 



292 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Dr. Holmes could call upon the young men to 
go to the war ; for his own son was there ; and 
with him thousands upon thousands of the true 
and brave ; for the flower of the land went forth 
at the call of the President and filled up the 
ranks from which other soldiers not less noble 
had fallen in battle. There was not a home 
where one of the household, or some friend of 
the family was not in the army, or had not 
fallen in battle among the heroes. And many 
parents mourning for their sons, recalled how 
the sad-eyed President had lost his own little 
son and could understand how they suffered. 
Also, his oldest son was in the army sharing 
the same risks that their sons did. 

In the June of 1864, when much hard work 
had been done since the Springfield Convention, 
and many hard-fought battles had been won— 
and some lost— the Republicans a second time 
nominated Abraham Lincoln for President. His 
opponent, the candidate of the peace party who 
said that the war was wrong and that everything 
about it had gone wrong, was General McClel- 
lan, who put himself side by side with men who 
hated and railed against the Union. 

In the July of 1864, the President called for 
five hundred thousand more men, to be had by 
draft if enough did not volunteer. His friends 
told him he would lose his election by doing 



HOW PEOPLE LEARNED TO TRUST HIM. 293 

such a thing; and even his enemies could not 
say that this was trying for his own election. 
But Mr. Lincoln had something more important 
than his election to look out for, although he 
certainly wanted to be allowed to finish the work 
so faithfully and successfully carried on thus 
far. But what was much more important was 
not to lose the Union battles for lack of soldiers ; 
the more quickly he could finish the war, the 
kinder for North and South alike. 

And Lincoln was right to trust in God to 
bring things out in the best way whatever that 
was; and to trust the great heart of the people 
to be true to him who was so true to them. For 
in November, when the people by their votes 
declared whom they chose for President, Lincoln 
had the largest majority that had ever been 
known, he was elected almost by acclamation. 
McClellan carried the electoral vote of New 
Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky— three States. 
All the rest were Lincoln's. 

"It was the carefully formed and solemnly 
announced judgment of the nation," says Stod- 
dard. 

How grateful the country must always be to 
remember that in the few months of life still 
remaining to Abraham Lincoln, he was not only 
to have his hands strengthened for the great 
work, but to have such assurance how deep was 



294 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

the nation's trust in him and love for him as 
their leader. 

And Lincoln thanked God and took courage, 
as it was his way to do. 



XL. 

How Grant Fought It Out on That Line. 

In the March of 1864, eight months before the 
re-election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, 
early one morning when the trains arriving in 
Washington from the West brought guests to 
the hotels, there came into Willard's with the 
others two passengers who took matters more 
quietly than the rest of the rushing crowd. One 
of the two was a middle-aged, sunburned man 
with an army hat and a linen duster, below which 
a glimpse of the narrow stripe of the army uni- 
form could be seen. The other was a boy of ten 
whom he held by the hand. The gaslights were 
turned down, and the sleepy clerk had been care- 
lessly assigning upper rooms to the guests ; this 
was before the days of elevators. When this 
was done, he subsided into his armchair again 
and closed his eyes. As the two travelers 
modestly approached the counter, the clerk not 
deigning to rise, gave the register a whirl so that 

295 



296 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

the open page was before the stranger and said : 
1 ' I suppose you will want a room together. ' ' He 
named a high number while the guest without 
reply wrote his name. The clerk twisted the 
register around to himself and was about to 
write the number of the room— when he sprang 
to his feet, thoroughly awake, bowed, scraped 
and begged a thousand pardons ! The traveler 
had been expected. The best apartments in the 
hotel had been reserved for him, on the first floor 
only up one flight. As the clerk took from the 
guest the small leather bag he had been carry- 
ing in his hand, and conducted him personally 
to his apartments, another guest watching took 
a peep at the register to see what great man this 
was who was treated with such honor. The 
stranger had written: "U. S. Grant and son, 
Galena, Illinois." 

This was the famous general who had cap- 
tured what the South had supposed the impreg- 
nable Vicksburg, then Port Hudson, and had 
thus opened the Mississippi River; and, later, 
had won a series of victories with his splendid 
generals, Sherman, Sheridan, Hooker, and 
Thomas who from his victory was called the 
"Rock of Chickamauga," because he won that 
battle after Rosecrans had been defeated. For 
when the confederate General Bragg was en- 
trenched at Lookout Mountain and Missionary 



HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 297 

Ridge and threatening Chattanooga, Grant and 
the others fought him, and Hooker followed him 
up Lookout Mountain until the army saw his 
battle flags above the clouds. So, Bragg ran 
away as fast as he could ; but Thomas followed 
him up and made him fight again, and drove 
him twenty miles. Then Grant drove back 
Longstreet, who was threatening Burnside. So, 
at the end of that campaign the Union forces 
held possession of Tennessee. 

After Vicksburg President Lincoln had writ- 
ten a beautiful letter of thanks to General Grant. 
And now in the following March when Congress 
had again created the office of Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral which had been dropped when Scott re- 
signed, Mr. Lincoln had nominated for that 
office, Ulysses S. Grant ; Congress had confirmed 
his nomination, and that early spring morning 
at Willard's here was Grant next in military 
rank to the President and the secretary of war. 
It was no wonder that the clerk bowed down to 
him ; and perhaps not so surprising that he had 
not known him ; for McClellan had not traveled 
with a hand bag ; it had taken several six-horse 
wagons to carry his furniture. 

General Grant at once assumed command of 
the armies, and announced that his headquarters 
would be in the field and until further orders 
with the army of the Potomac. 



298 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

Stoddard tells how one Sunday morning a few 
weeks later he called to see the President. Mr. 
Lincoln was stretched upon the sofa with one 
hand thrown up over his head and an air of 
relaxation about him, as if some burden had 
been removed from him. After talking for a 
time, his visitor asked: 

" 'Now, Mr. Lincoln, what sort of a man is 
Grant? I've never even seen him. He has 
taken hold here while I have been laid up. 
What do you think of him?' 

"Mr. Lincoln half rose, and laughed. 'Well, 
I hardly know what to think of him, altogether/ 
he answered. 'He's the quietest little fellow 
you ever saw.' 

" 'How is that?' 

" 'Why, he makes the least fuss of any man 
you ever knew. I believe two or three times he 
has been in this room a minute or so before I 
knew he was here. It's about so all around. 
The only evidence you have that he's in any 
place is that he makes things git! Wherever 
he is, things move ! ' " The President talked with 
animation; he was describing the man he had 
been longing for. Then his visitor asked about 
Grant's generalship, and whether he was going 
to be the man? " 'Grant is the first general I've 
had! He's a general!' returned Lincoln. 'You 
know how it has been with all the rest. As soon 






HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 299 

as I put a man in command of the army, he'd 
come to me with a plan of a campaign and about 
as much as say: "Now, I don't believe I can do 
it, but if you say so, I'll try it on," and so put 
the responsibility of success or failure on me; 
they all wanted me to be the general. Now, it 
isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what 
his plans are. I don't know, and I don't want 
to know. I'm glad to find a man that can go 
ahead without me.' " 

General Sherman was put into Grant's former 
place as commander of the army of the Missis- 
sippi; Halleck was still the President's military 
adviser; and one thing was especially to be 
noticed— from the time that Grant took com- 
mand of the army, there was one plan, making 
one movement fit in with another. The Presi- 
dent, Grant, Sherman and all the generals 
worked in harmony; rivalries and jealousies so 
prevalent under McClellan were almost wholly 
banished. The officers ceased to fight each other 
and took to fighting the enemy. For, henceforth, 
"there was energy in attack, speed in pursuit, 
and everywhere the right man in the right 
place." Grant and his officers had most perfect 
faith in each other. 

At midnight May third, 1864, the Union troops 
began to move; and on the fourth the whole 
army was across the Rapidan. The two follow- 



300 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

ing days were fought the terrible battles of the 
Wilderness. May seventh Grant began to move 
toward Spotsylvania Court House ; but Lee who 
was nearer reached there first. May ninth, tenth 
and eleventh were spent in constant maneuver- 
ing and fighting. And on the eleventh Grant 
sent to Washington that famous dispatch: 
"Our losses have been heavy as well as those 
of the enemy, and I propose to fight it out on 
this line if it takes all summer." 

But not only all summer, but all the autumn, 
and the winter also, did the brave army of 
Northern Virginia with its able commander hold 
out against the forces that were closing in upon 
it from all sides. We should pity the soldiers 
in their final surrender, if that surrender had 
not been the most blessed thing for themselves, 
as well as for the whole nation. 

May twelfth, 1864, and later at North Anna 
and Cold Harbor, indeed, during the whole 
weeks of May and early June came constant 
fighting and marching in both armies, and in 
all these furious and persistent battles terrible 
loss of life on both sides; but greater in the 
Union army, because Lee had shorter marches 
and knew the country perfectly and could choose 
his own time and place to fight. Petersburg, on 
the Appomattox River about twenty miles south 
of Richmond, connected Richmond by rail with 



HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 301 

all the South and Southwest. If Petersburg 
could be taken and held by the Union forces, 
Richmond must soon fall. Grant struggled long, 
however, before the capture of this city. 

General Grant moved his army south of the 
James River. General Hunter who had been 
sent up the Shenandoah Valley, defeated the 
confederates at Piedmont and then marched to 
Lynchburg. He arrived there June sixteenth. 
The confederate General Breckinridge was hold- 
ing the place and Lee sent General Early to him 
with reinforcements. Together, they made Hun- 
ter retreat. Then Early with twelve thousand 
veterans marched down the Shenandoah Valley 
toward Maryland. General Lew Wallace with 
a small force stood between him and Washing- 
ton and Baltimore. But Early came within 
seven miles of the White House! Grant had 
sent troops to keep Early from Washington, and 
told Sheridan to drive him back and then 
destroy the Shenandoah valley so that it could 
no longer furnish support to the confederate 
troops. In September Sheridan attacked Early 
at Opequan Creek, and drove him from the field 
with loss, and pursued him to the passes of the 
Blue Ridge Mountains. Then he tore up the 
railroads, destroyed provisions and forage and 
drove off the stock, so that the whole country 
about there was a wilderness. But the middle 



302 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

of October Early crossed the mountains again, 
and while Sheridan was absent surprised a part 
of the Union army and drove it off the field. 
But Sheridan away off at Winchester, heard 
the guns and came back. His army had made 
a stand at Middleton. He had not a word of 
blame for his men, but treated the defeat like 
an accident that they were going to make up for 
at once. And so they did. They went after 
Early, attacked and defeated him and got back 
the prisoners and the guns they had lost. This 
battle will be remembered by that fine poem, 
"Sheridan's Ride." 

At the time that Grant crossed the Eapidan, 
Sherman commanding in the West, but under 
Grant's orders, was watching the confederate 
army "proud, defiant and exultant" at Dalton. 
They had recovered from Mission Ridge and 
were ready for more battles. There is not time 
to tell of all that wonderful campaign; how 
Sherman drove them under their skilful com- 
mander, Johnston, and defeated them again and 
again when Hood took Johnston's place; and 
how, early in September, he obtained possession 
of Atlanta, Georgia, and turned the city into a 
military post. When the citizens objected, he 
told them that as soon as they would come into 
the Union, his army would do nothing but pro- 
tect and defend them. Hood turned North to 



HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 303 

get Sherman back from Atlanta. But Sherman 
telegraphed to Grant asking permission to 
march through the enemy's country, " smashing 
tilings as he went,"— destroying railroads and 
whatever would be of use to the confederates. 
He let General Thomas take care of Hood at 
Nashville ; and Thomas with battle and prison- 
ers broke up Hood's army. 

The story of ' ' Sherman 's grand march to the 
sea ' ' reads like a wonderful romance. He broke 
up the telegraph wires and the railroads, and 
started. Then he must reach the sea, or perish. 
On his way he captured the city of Macon, and 
Milledgeville, the capital, and on the twentieth 
of December with aid of Admiral Dahlgren 
whom Lincoln had sent by water to co-operate 
with him, he wrote the President a dispatch: 
"I present you as a Christmas gift the city of 
Savannah, with one hundred and fifty guns, 
plenty of ammunition, and about twenty-five 
thousand bales of cotton." 

Then followed the capture of Wilmington, 
Columbia, Goldsboro, and Charleston; and a 
battle with General Johnston who was driven 
back. And now the Union forces from all parts 
were gathering about Lee, and the end of the 
war was near. 

When, at last, Lee tried to escape, there was 
Grant on one hand, and Sheridan was on the 



304 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

other, watching, marching, fighting, and always 
barring his way to safety. 

On the twenty-seventh of March the Presi- 
dent, and Generals Grant and Sherman met on 
a steamer in the James River and talked over 
the situation. Seldom, if ever, have three more 
wonderful men met together; Sherman famed 
from his campaign in Tennessee which, as Lin- 
coln said, would live in history, his devotion to 
Grant, his generous appreciation of the work of 
all the splendid officers and men that surrounded 
them; Grant who when chosen for his position 
modestly said that Sherman ought to have the 
place; and Lincoln, strong, patient, far-seeing, 
crowned with success, yet using his success to 
unite his country and to bless his countrymen, 
North and South. The generals both agreed 
that one more bloody battle was likely to be 
fought before the end of the war. ' ' Must more 
blood be shed ? ' ' questioned Mr. Lincoln. ' ' Can- 
not this be avoided?" But they thought that 
Lee would fight. 

Even while the three were talking, General 
Sheridan was marching to cut off Lee's re- 
treat. "Ten days of incessant marching and 
fighting, with Sheridan in the lead and Grant 
closely following," says Arnold, "finished the 
campaign. ' ' March twenty-ninth Grant wrote to 



HOW GRANT FOUGHT IT OUT. 305 

Sheridan : "I now feel like ending the matter, 
if it be possible, before going back." 

And he did end it. For, April second, Long- 
street who had been defending Richmond was 
ordered to join Lee, who made one last desper- 
ate attempt to cut his way through the Union 
armies. That same day Lee sent to Jefferson 
Davis saying that Richmond and Petersburg 
could not be held any longer. And, "the bells 
of Richmond tolled the knell of the Confed- 
eracy." 

But Grant, with Sheridan and other generals 
helping, kept on after Lee who was penned up 
so that he had no escape and who could not 
cut his way out. 

Therefore, on the ninth of April, 1865, he 
surrendered. Truly, Grant had "fought it out 
on that line." 

Generous terms of surrender were made with 
Lee; and officers and men were permitted to 
return to their homes, "not to be disturbed so 
long as they observed their parole, and the 
laws." 



XLI. 

Lincoln's Walk Through Richmond. 

Mr. Lincoln had been staying at City Point 
for several days, getting daily, almost hourly 
news from General Grant how tilings were 
going, and sending word to Washington, to be 
distributed over the country. The day after 
the fall of Richmond he went in a gunboat 
accompanied by Admiral Porter, Hon. Charles 
Sumner and a few others to within a mile of the 
city, and from there in a row boat to the wharf. 
Landing, he walked on, leading his little son Tad 
by the hand and with the few sailors who had 
rowed him for a body-guard. If he had had all 
the escort that came in the gunboat which had 
been blocked by obstructions in the river, it 
would have been little more. 

Never before did conqueror enter conquered 
city like this. Troops, martial music, a splendid 
procession, the chief prisoners captured, kings 

306 



LINCOLN'S WALK THROUGH RICHMOND. 307 

and generals, walking behind loaded with chains 
and reserved for torture and death — these were 
the triumphs of old days, of Rome, and of later 
times also. But Lincoln was too great for the 
display that many conquerors of modern times 
would have demanded ; he was a king of men in 
himself and did not need to try to impress 
people with his grandeur. God had made him 
so grand that he could not have helped doing 
this, had he tried. 

But in addition to Lincoln's hatred of display, 
he did not come as a conqueror to Richmond 
and the South ; he came as a peace-maker, a pro- 
tector, a comforter. That day his troops were 
busy putting out the fires which the confederates 
had kindled in the beautiful city, just as he him- 
self was laboring to put out the fires of suffer- 
ing kindled throughout the South by Jefferson 
Davis and his co-workers; and as he walked 
that fourth of April through the streets of Rich- 
mond, his thoughts were not of pride of victory 
over the people, but that he was their President, 
their rightful ruler for the time of his election, 
one who had the best of all rights to inquire 
into their condition and bring them what aid 
he could. 

But if the confederates were not ready to 
understand and welcome him, the colored peojrie 



308 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

were. With a black man as guide Lincoln went 
on to the headquarters of the commanding 
officer, the house from which Jefferson Davis 
had run away. And as Lincoln went on, the 
crowd of the liberated blacks gathered more and 
more thickly about him with shouts and bless- 
ings and prayers and tears, until the tears fell 
from Lincoln's eyes also. However much the 
whites, North and South, might abuse and vilify 
this wonderful man, the colored people never 
made a mistake about him ; nothing shook their 
faith in him. 

They were right. One of the few times when 
Lincoln's even temper was roused well-nigh to 
fury was when some one proposed to him to try 
to win over the belligerent masters and secure 
peace by abandoning the freedmen. "Why, it 
would be an astounding breach of faith!" cried 
Lincoln. "If I should do it, I ought to be 
damned in time and eternity!" He had forced 
the confederates to treat the colored troops cap- 
tured as prisoners of war. At first they sold 
them back into slavery, or else shot them. 

That fourth of April he held a short recep- 
tion in the room lately used by Mr. Davis, took 
a drive about the city, and went back that even- 
ing to City Point. 

A few days later the President with Mrs. 



LINCOLN'S WALK THROUGH RICHMOND. 309 

Lincoln and several senators and friends went 
to Richmond once more. Neither then did he 
go as its conqueror, but as its President and its 
friend. 



XLII. 

The Joy of the Nation in Victory and Peace. 

That was a strange scene at Appomattox in 
Virginia, the ninth of April, 1865, when Gen- 
eral Lee had surrendered and the great civil 
war was virtually over. The two armies no 
longer faced each other in battle array, or 
fought, each with a bravery which made the 
other respect it and feel that enemies so valiant 
must make worthy friends. The time for friend- 
ship had come; it was here. For confederates 
and Union men, officers and soldiers, were all 
mixed up together shaking hands, congratu- 
lating one another, no doubt, on brilliant 
achievements each side had performed, and 
glad enough to be able to talk these over instead 
of more fighting. But this was not all; the 
confederate soldiers were starving; the Union 
soldiers made them their guests and shared 
their rations with them until the government 
stores should come up and furnish them more 

310 



JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 311 

bountifully. The confederates were half clad, 
sometimes not even that, and the Union soldiers 
shared their clothing with them. And even this 
was not all; the confederates had been given 
permission to return to their homes ; but they 
had no money to go with; and the Union 
soldiers loaned them money for this. Their 
enemies had vanished; these men, brave, van- 
quished, suffering and needy were their fellow- 
countrymen, and as such the Union soldiers 
treated them. And as such they have remained 
through all the years that have gone by since 
those days. Complaint, suffering, poverty, bit- 
terness have been in plenty. But, thanks to the 
spirit of peace and patriotism and Christian 
brotherhood which God put into Lincoln's heart 
to inaugurate, from the very first instant that 
reconciliation was possible, the peace which 
came, as he had longed and worked for it to 
come, was a peace "worth the keeping in all 
future time." 

Nothing connected with the surrender of Lee 
could have touched Lincoln so deeply as that 
brotherly spirit of the soldiers of the two armies. 
* ' With malice toward none, ' ' he had said. And 
he was right. The soldiers who had fought; 
the parents and children, the wives and sweet- 
hearts who had given their dearest a sacrifice 
to their country— all these knew that the South 



312 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

who had fought a brave fight for what many of 
them had been taught was liberty, or who were 
also mourning their dear ones, had already 
suffered more than their victors could inflict. 
For though revenge strides side by side with 
anger, it is not found in the hearts of those who 
sorrow deeply. 

There had been no compromise ; the war had 
been fought out. The South could not lift a 
hand again if she would. It was time to remem- 
ber that we were countrymen, and that the ter- 
rible battlefields where Union and confederate 
lay buried side by side proved how truly we 
were brothers in the valor and endurance that 
all men prize. Thus at the end of the war the 
North and the South were much better ac- 
quainted than at its beginning; and when in 
the poverty that fell upon the South, it became 
necessary for their men to work as they had 
never done before, they had learned from the 
hard-fought battles with Northern soldiers that 
labor does not make cowards, as some had 
believed in the old days. 

Then, the Union at the North after the war 
was much closer than it had ever been before. 
This was partly because any great cause unites 
the people who love it and work in it, and be- 
cause those in one place who mourned for their 
soldiers slain were drawn in thought and inter- 



JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 313 

est toward other parts of the country mourning 
also. The same is true of the rejoicing over 
Union victories. 

But Mr. Lincoln had recognized the necessity 
of closer union and knew that this would come 
by acquaintance of one part with another. In 
his famous letter to the Springfield Convention 
which has been spoken of, when he says of the 
opening of the Mississippi: "The Father of 
Waters again goes unvexed to the sea, ' ' he adds : 
■ ' Thanks to the great Northwest for it ; nor yet 
wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they 
met New England, Empire, Keystone and Jer- 
sey, hewing their way right and left. The 
sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also 
lent a helping hand. On the spot their part of 
the history was jotted down in black and white. 
The job was a great national one and let none 
be slighted who bore an honorable part in it." 
And then he speaks of "Antietam, Murfrees- 
boro, Gettysburg and many other fields." This 
was Mr. Lincoln's way of bringing East and 
West together and making soldiers of different 
sections acquainted with each other and every 
part of the country dear to those who had fought 
for it. He was always sending Eastern troops 
out West and bringing Western soldiers to the 
army of the Potomac. It was truly said of him 
that he could take a long look ahead. He saw 



314 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

what needed to be done to make the Union 
stronger than it ever had been: and he helped 
to bring this about. 

But there was something of far greater im- 
portance that Abraham Lincoln did; and for 
this alone his name would be immortal. This 
was his emancipation proclamation freeing four 
millions of human beings, and destroying the 
cause of the war and one of the means of carry- 
ing it on by the South. To complete this work 
and to make freedom secure, it was necessary 
that Congress should pass a constitutional 
amendment abolishing slavery in the whole 
country, and that three-quarters of all the 
States should ratify it. 

One evening early in 1865, a vast crowd 
assembled at the White House to congratulate 
the President on the passage in Congress of 
this constitutional amendment. The band 
played national airs, and Mr. Lincoln radiant 
with joy said to the assembly: 

"The great job is ended. * * * The occasion 
is one of congratulation, and I cannot but con- 
gratulate all present, myself, the country, and 
the whole world upon this great moral victory. 
The amendment has already been ratified by 
Illinois, and Maryland is half through; but I 
feel proud," he added, "that Illinois is a little 
ahead. * * * This ends the job." 



JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 315 

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln had lost his elec- 
tion as Senator from Illinois by his declaration : 
"This nation cannot endure permanently half 
slave and half free." Within seven years, he, 
as the second time elected President of the 
United States could say of slavery, formerly so 
pre-eminent: "The great job (of its abolition) 
is ended." As he said, Illinois led off. Rhode 
Island, Michigan, Maryland, and so on, followed 
until more than three-fourths of all the States 
had ratified the amendment. 

Lincoln's second inaugural was most bril- 
liantly attended; he had become the beloved and 
trusted of the nation. On that Fourth of March, 
1865, he stood a moment looking over the crowd 
and recalling the memories of those last four 
years. His voice was clear, but sad at times, 
and afterward it seemed to the people a fare- 
well. An eminent man present said as he came 
down from the Capitol: "The President's in- 
augural is the finest state paper in all history." 
Arnold says of it: "This paper in its solemn 
recognition of the justice of Almighty God, 
reminds us of the words of the old Hebrew 
prophets. The paper," he adds, "was read in 
Europe with the most profound attention, and 
from this time all thinking men recognized the 
intellectual and moral greatness of its author." 
All who read about Lincoln should read this 



316 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

second inaugural. But the last paragraph be- 
came household words in the nation. It has 
been said that not even Washington's farewell 
address made so deep an impression upon the 
people. He said: 

"With malice towards none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right as God gives us 
to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, 
to bind up the nation's wounds, * * * to do all 
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

This was his spirit toward the South. The 
world saw that it was the spirit of Christ. 

How fast those days sped between the last 
inauguration and the end! And how full they 
were of triumph and satisfaction to Lincoln. 
As soon as Lee surrendered, the President 
ordered all drafting and recruiting for the 
armies to cease. 

From the eleventh of April to the fourteenth 
the days were crowded with joyful events; 
the confederate armies all surrendered; and 
throughout the North, every city, town, village 
and little hamlet went wild with joy. All the 
houses, even those homes from which soldiers 
had died were decorated with Union flags and 
Union colors. All the houses were illuminated. 
The people rang the bells and fired salutes. 
Bands of music played and people sang patriotic 



JOY OF NATION IN VICTORY AND PEACE. 317 

songs; and everywhere went up the voice of 
praise and thanks to God for the blessings of 
peace and freedom. 

No one was more happy than Mr. Lincoln. 
That morning of April fourteenth his son Rob- 
ert just come back from the front, told his father 
all the details of Lee's surrender. Victory, 
honor, the love of the nation, peace, freedom for 
the slave, and the spirit of mercy and peace in 
his heart — all blessings crowned this great life 
on that fourteenth day of April; he and the 
nation were glad together— that last day. 



XLIII. 

A People's Grief. 

In the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington 
lay a funeral bier tenderly watched and guarded 
by sad and sorrowing soldiers to whom the 
silent figure lying there had seemed in life to 
care for them with a father's protectingness. 
The coffin was constantly covered with quan- 
tities of beautiful spring flowers daily renewed 
and always fresh, while as the days went by, 
thousands and tens of thousands of people in a 
mournful procession bent down for a last look 
at the serene face of the figure on the catafalque, 
and turned away with grief-stricken faces and 
with streaming eyes. For a week this silent 
figure lay thus in the Capitol, and then the 
funeral procession started for the West. 

What did it all mean— this death and the sor- 
rowing multitudes? 

On the evening of the fourteenth of April 
when after the storm of four years' war, peace 
318 




THE ASSASSINATION OF LINCOLN. 



A PEOPLE'S GRIEF. 319 

had come to the country and a nation's deep 
devotion to its President, a man had come into 
the theatre where Mr. Lincoln had gone for a 
little recreation from his toils, and entering the 
President's box, had shot him. Abraham Lin- 
coln had been assassinated. 

The country that only the day before had been 
wild with joy over the return of peace, was in 
its length and breadth like a land where in 
every household there is one dead. There was 
universal mourning in city and town and coun- 
try, in the crowded streets, in the lonely farm- 
houses—everywhere was mourning; but no dis- 
turbance, no outbreak unfitting respect to such 
a man as Lincoln; the grief was too deep and 
genuine. People who had not heard of Lin- 
coln's assassination coming into great cities 
would be amazed at the strange aspect of the 
place ; the whole people were mourning, all busi- 
ness was suspended. Everywhere the flags that 
only the day before had been floating high in 
joy were sadly lowered to half-mast; and by 
common consent all the people draped black in 
their homes in sign of grief. In the great streets 
of cities, on the magnificent buildings, in hand- 
some private houses — not in a few places alone, 
but throughout the land this emblem was but 
outward sign of a sorrow that gripped the deep- 



320 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

est heart of the people. But when in the dwell- 
ings of the poor, even of the very poor, there 
could be seen the shabby bit of black gathered 
one knew not whence and displayed as symbol 
of a real grief — then Abraham Lincoln was 
mourned as he would have been mourned; the 
"plain people" whom he loved and deeply 
appreciated, paid him their tribute of sorrow. 
One instance illustrates many. In a small 
town in Massachusetts, the duty of putting 
up the flags of the place on fitting occasions 
devolved at that time upon a Democrat famed 
for his want of feeling, and of interest in pub- 
lic affairs. That morning after the assassina- 
tion, as he walked toward the flagstaff carrying 
the flag under his arm, one who had not heard 
the sad event asked him the news. As the man 
turned to answer, his eyes were filled with tears. 

Memorial services were held in churches and 
halls everywhere. 

This assassination was no plot of the South 's; 
and it was never proved that even any of the 
Southern leaders knew anything of the pur- 
pose of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin. 
Others were working with him, for that same 
evening Secretary Seward was assaulted, and 
would also have been killed but for those in 
the house with him. But the South was already 



. A PEOPLE'S GRIEF. 321 

beginning to perceive what a friend it had 
in the President. In public and private the 
people expressed their honor at the deed. In 
Little Rock, Arkansas, a meeting of the order 
of masons was called to express their sorrow; 
the hall was well filled, most of those present 
were ex-confederate soldiers and they listened 
to a funeral oration upon Lincoln given by a 
well-known Union man. Never was so deep a 
mourning in a nation. 

April twenty-first the funeral procession left 
Washington, and Lincoln lay in state in some 
of the cities it passed through. It was a long 
and sorrowful journey. From all cities, towns, 
from the country — everywhere — people came 
with uncovered heads and eyes full of tears, 
bringing flowers. Minute guns, tolling bells, 
mournful music, flags at half-mast were every- 
where. The reception at Baltimore was im- 
pressive, and especially there and elsewhere the 
colored people mourned him. At Philadelphia 
he lay in state in old Independence Hall. The 
old historic bell with its words: "Proclaim 
liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants 
thereof," stood at the head of Lincoln's bier. 
It was he who, under God, had made those words 
absolutely true in this land. 

So, the sad procession passed on to Spring- 
field where the President was buried. 



322 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

But Abraham Lincoln still lives in the hearts 
of the American people; and he will live there 
so long as the liberty for which he lived and 
died exists in our land. 



XLIV. 

The Great American. 

Was it only because Abraham Lincoln was the 
President of a great republic which had just 
ended successfully a long and terrible civil war 
that there came from all over the world tributes 
to his memory! No. From the throne to the 
humblest cottage the wail of sorrow was heard ; 
for a man who blessed the world had gone from 
it. Queen Victoria with her own hand wrote 
to Mrs. Lincoln her message of sorrow. From 
Parliament and Westminster Abbey, from India 
and Australia, and Canada, and the isles of the 
sea, from the whole English-speaking race, 
everywhere, came the voice of sorrow. And not 
the English alone, but all nations sent their 
word of grief and sympathy for us. Mr. Seward 
called all these messages from abroad which 
were sent to the State Department of our Gov- 
ernment: "The Tribute of the Nations to 
Abraham Lincoln. ' ' They were printed, and fill 

323 



324 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

a quarto volume of almost one thousand pages, 
''unique in its character," comments one writer, 
"and a tribute never before in any age paid to 
any man." 

In the famous cemetery of Calton Hill, Edin- 
burgh, Scotland, stands a beautiful monument 
erected to Abraham Lincoln, with a statue of 
Lincoln and at his feet a freedman kneeling 
with broken chains. 

To the world, as well as to his countrymen, 
Abraham Lincoln is "the great American." 
He and Washington are the only men who can 
be compared. "Washington is the great man 
of the era of the Revolution," says an hi 
torian; "and so will Lincoln be of this (the 
Civil War) : but Lincoln will reach the higher 
position in history." 

The prediction he made in leaving his Spring- 
field friends for his inauguration, that the task 
before him was harder than Washington's had 
proved true. And, under the guidance of God 
whom he came to recognize more and more, he 
performed this task with a perfection which 
even Washington, born in a different era and 
differently trained, could not have reached. 

If Abraham Lincoln had been born anywhere, 
and at any time, he must have been great. But 
only in America could he have reached the 
place he did, and done the great work for which 



THE GREAT AMERICAN. 325 

we are thankful to him. But he is "the great 
American" in a deeper sense than that he was 
born and did his wonderful work in this land, 
lie is the highest example that the world has 
seen, and perhaps ever will see, of what America 
means and wants to be. For the American 
republic in its ideal is the highest form of gov- 
ernment in the world and requires the highest 
kind of man to carry it out perfectly; and this 
Lincoln was. Every man should be good and 
true. But a man born in a republic has a special 
responsibility, because here every man has a 
voice and is in that sense a ruler, and to the 
extent of his power the fate of the country rests 
upon him; he should think of public affairs, 
and have a broad outlook, know what is going 
on and what ought to be done; he should not 
be ignorant; and he should be interested in 
everything helpful to free institutions and 
should work for these. 

In his love for free institutions Abraham Lin- 
coln stands second to none in the world. In 
upholding these against one of the greatest 
attacks upon them that the world has seen, he 
stands the very first. His brains were as much 
above the brains of ordinary men as his inches 
were ; the work he did was stupendous ; and the 
way he did it won the admiration of the whole 
world and the deep gratitude of his countrymen. 



326 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

To have been born in a log-cabin and to have 
risen to be the President of one of the greatest 
countries in the world is much; yet other men 
also have from humble birth risen to great 
power. But no man who has so risen has used 
bis great power as Lincoln did; and no man not 
born on a throne has ever freed four millions of 
human beings, as Lincoln did. And all the while 
that he fought the confederacy at the South, he 
led and guided the people at the North, persuad- 
ing, convincing, as no other man could do. As an 
orator he was wonderful ; and for clearness and 
power and greatness his public letters and state 
papers will live as long as the English language. 
It was no wonder that his secretary of war, Ed- 
win M. Stanton, as he stood gazing at Abraham 
Lincoln dead by the bullet of an assassin, said : 
''There lies the most perfect ruler of men the 
world has ever seen." 

But intellect alone never blesses. There was 
more. When the young man, "Abe Lincoln," 
clerk in a country store, locked the door of his 
shop and walked miles to return to a customer 
a few cents that he had overcharged by mis- 
take, he showed that quality which afterward 
held to him in the dark days of the war the 
"plain people" of whom he was always so fond, 
and so appreciative. No matter how much they 
blamed him— and at times the blame was ter- 



THE GREAT AMERICAN. 327 

rible— under it all was the absolute faith that he 
meant well. Although the title, "honest Abe" 
was buried under the later honors poured out on 
him, yet his unswerving fidelity was the real 
cause of his success. 

And when, years after the store-keeping, he 
gave up the chance of being senator from Illinois 
—a place he wanted much— because he held it 
of more importance to speak a truth which 
might help to lead his country to perceive 
whither slavery was leading it, and to resist- 
when Abraham Lincoln did this, he proved that 
he held his country and free institutions higher 
than place for himself, and that he could not be 
bought to be silent when he ought to speak. 
That was an honesty which, joined to his great 
power of mind, made him worthy to lead the 
nation through its peril, as God gave him to do; 
and to speak the great word of freedom to the 
slave and wipe out slavery from our land. 

One thing more. A real republic is always 
a theocracy, which means that it has God for 
its ruler; or it cannot continue. No man ever 
believed this more than Abraham Lincoln. God 
Must have been often in his thoughts, for Lin- 
coln came to speak of Him and His help and 
guidance as the most natural force in life. He 
had suffered so much and done so much, that 
the more honors he had put upon him, the more 



328 LIFE OF LINCOLN FOR BOYS. 

he wanted to do the work God had appointed 
him, and'help to heal and bless the nation wheu 
peace had come at last. 

In mental ability, in moral power, in faith in 
God from whom all came, in what he has done 
for the nation, in the example of a life perfectly 
true from first to last to its devotion to free 
institutions— true even to dying for them— 
Abraham Lincoln is "the great American." 

Two things that he has said let us remember 
through life, to do them ; and they will help us 
more than anything else to honor his memory 
in our own lives and to help as we can do to 
keep freedom and peace among men. Let us 
"resolve," as he said at Gettysburg, "that gov- 
ernment of the people, by the people, for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." 

And all of us in living will help the republic 
to live if we hold in our hearts and lives those 
wonderful words from Abraham Lincoln: 
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
with firmness in the right as God gives us to 
see the right." 



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